Why Australia’s fastest male sprinter of all time was NOT picked for the national six-man relay squad

He is the Aussie that came from the clouds to record the fastest all-conditions 100m sprint time in Australian history, yet his historic run was not deemed good enough to earn national selection.

While the rise of Gout Gout has dominated news cycles and his great friend and rival Lachlan Kennedy continues to nip at his heels, it was unheralded runner Eddie Osei-Nketia that put them both in the shade recently.

Based in the United States and running at a college track meet, Osei-Nketia stunned his American rivals and put his name on the Australian map with a blistering run of 9.84 seconds. 

It was the fastest ever recorded by an Australian and put the 24-year-old firmly in the mix for the LA Olympics in 2028.

It beat Patrick Johnson’s famous 9.88 second run in 2003, plus anything past greats like Matt Shirvington and rising stars Gout and Kennedy have ever recorded.

However it was Joshua Azzopardi, Rohan Browning, Jai Gordon, Christopher Ius, Kennedy and Calab Law that were picked for the 4x100m team for the World Athletics Relays.

The omission of Gout was expected, with his coaching staff electing to manage his development, reduce injury risk and focus on his school studies as a 17-year-old.

But Osei-Nketia missing the cut has stunned plenty of people in Australia, given his timely run that shattered all previous records.

And the fact he had an illegal 2.8 metres per second wind boost during that run was not even the reason he was left out.

Osei-Nketia was born in Auckland and has represented New Zealand for all of his junior and most of his recent senior career. 

After the young gun was controversially left out of the New Zealand’s Olympic and Commonwealth Games national teams in 2021 and 2022, though, he elected to change allegiances.

While his father Gus is a former New Zealand national 100m record holder, the family moved to Canberra when Eddie was just nine, making him eligible to race for Australia.

His younger brother Augustine Nketia Junior also represents Australia and is a promising sprinter in his own right.

However Eddie has spent little time in the Australian system and travelled to the United States to attempt to kickstart an NFL career.

So Australian selectors opted to reward the runners who have been coming up through the local system, to try and keep continuity ahead of Olympic campaigns where medals are firmly on the table.

That doesn’t mean Eddie is out of the mix completely. Australian Athletics’ high performance boss Andrew Faichney is working with the US college system to map out a plan to have the sprint star working with the Aussie team moving forward.

‘Whilst the Commonwealth Games are ​a very, very ⁠important competition for us, it’s not as understood by U.S. colleges,’ Faichney told Reuters.

‘So we’ll still work with Eddie and his coach and the college as to what his availability looks like.

‘We’re certainly hoping for the 2027 world championships and 2028 Olympics that he will be a ⁠strong member ​of the Australian team.’

 And the US college system knows just how brightly Eddie’s star could shine at those events.

‘I think he could be the best ever, at least from Australia,’ Nketia’s NCAA coach, Brenton Emmanuel said.

‘I can’t say he’s gonna be the best in the world [in history] because obviously Usain Bolt was an anomaly, but I definitely think Eddie has a long career in track and field.

“We’ve made some changes to his diet and his physique and stuff like that, and I think it’s paying off, and he’s still figuring out his block start. You would never know a young man that strong, as strong as he is, is still like a baby behind the ears in the weight room, but also in the blocks, and he needs to continue to get better.

‘That [9.84-second run] was just a preview of what he’s capable of doing in my opinion.’