Kirani Zeno James CBE COG (born 1 September 1992) is a Grenadian professional sprinter who specializes in the 400 metres. He won the 400 m at the World Championships in 2011 and won the gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics.[1] In the 400 metres, James also won the silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and a bronze medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, thus becoming the first man to earn the full set of three medals in the centennial history of the event. He is Grenada's first Olympic medalist.[2] He holds the Grenadian national record in both the 200 metres and 400 metres.
As a junior, James also specialized in the 200 metres. Prodigious from a young age, he ran the fastest 400 m times ever by a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old. He won a series of gold medals at the CARIFTA Games and the Commonwealth Youth Games and rose on the international stage with 400 m silver medals at the 2007 World Youth and 2008 World Junior Championships. James became the first athlete to run a 200/400 double at the 2009 World Youth Championships and was the 2010 World Junior Champion.
James received an athletic scholarship at the University of Alabama and won back-to-back NCAA Outdoor Championship titles in his first two years. He is the third fastest of all-time indoors (44.80 seconds) and ran a personal best of 43.74 at a 2014 Diamond League event in Lausanne. James is one of only eleven athletes (along with Valerie Adams, Usain Bolt, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Armand Duplantis, Jacques Freitag, Yelena Isinbayeva, Faith Kipyegon, Jana Pittman, Dani Samuels, and David Storl) to win world championships at the youth, junior, and senior level of an athletic event.
- ^ "Olympics: Kirani James romps to historic 400m gold". The Times of India. Retrieved 7 August 2012.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
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