The most effective moments of the monitor and area season yearly is watching North America’s quickest masters athletes compete on the Penn Relays in Philadelphia—and this 12 months’s version didn’t disappoint. Within the males’s 70+ 100m, Thomas Jones of Glenn Dale, Md., threw down a time for the ages, blazing previous the competitors to win in 12.89 seconds—regardless of a slight (+1.1m/s) headwind.
12.89 100m at 71 Years Outdated!
THOMAS JONES TAKES DOWN MICHAEL KISH.
The #PennRelays 70+ 100m sprint didn’t disappoint.
Protection offered by @on_running pic.twitter.com/THAQ7QPHAF
— FloTrack (@FloTrack) April 24, 2025
The 71-year-old topped the remainder of the boys’s 70+ division by practically a full second, dethroning final 12 months’s champion, Michael Kish, within the course of.
Jones’s stride within the video says all of it—as soon as he hit high velocity, there was no trying again. With this win, he would possibly simply earn some critical factors within the world’s coolest grandpa competitors. Let’s be sincere, the road “my grandpa’s sooner than you” hits completely different when it’s really true.
To place his efficiency in perspective, Jones reached a high velocity of practically 28 km/h. That’s sensational for any age, however at 71? Unreal. His time was simply shy of the boys’s 70+ world file of 12.59 seconds, set by fellow American masters sprinter Damien Leake in 2023.
Jones has been sprinting for practically 4 a long time and has collected quite a lot of world medals for Group USA within the males’s 60m (indoor), 100m, and 4x400m relay occasions on the World Masters Championships.