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A Commonwealth Games 100m Record That Waited 28 Years - Broken in the Pouring Glasgow Rain

Comic-style illustration of a lone sprinter in a red vest powering around a floodlit red running track at night in driving rain, spikes kicking up sprays of water, a distant crowd under umbrellas

Sprint records are usually chased on warm, still evenings, with a friendly tailwind and a fast track. The one that fell at the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games did not get any of that. It went down on a cold, soaking Tuesday night at Scotstoun Stadium, in rain heavy enough to suspend other events, under a wind that barely helped at all. And it still went down.

Cameroon's Emmanuel Eseme won the men's 100m final on the evening of 28 July in 9.83 seconds - a new Commonwealth Games record, and the fastest time ever run at these Games. The mark he beat had stood since 1998. Twenty-eight years is a long time for a sprint record to survive; it is a much stranger thing for it to finally break on a night when nobody could feel their fingers.

This is the story of that race - what actually happened, what the numbers say, and, just as importantly, the couple of details we could not nail down and are not going to pretend we did.

What happened on the track

According to the report published by World Athletics, the sport's world governing body, Eseme crossed the line in 9.83 seconds, with a wind reading of +1.3 metres per second. That number matters: anything above +2.0 would make a time record-ineligible, so +1.3 is comfortably legal. This was a real, ratifiable run, not a wind-aided one.

Behind him, Australia's Lachlan Kennedy took silver in 9.85 - itself an Oceanian record - and Nigeria's Kayinsola Ajayi ran 9.90 for bronze. South Africa's Gift Leotlela was fourth in 9.91. Those four times, all bunched inside eight hundredths of a second, tell you how tight the final was: on a dry, fast night any one of them might have won, and the rain flattened everyone's margins at once.

Wales' Jeremiah Azu, one of the pre-race names, finished fifth in 10.04, per the England Athletics session report. It was not the night the home-nations sprinters had wanted, but on a track that turned every race into a fight against the weather, tenths came and went that would have stayed put in the dry.

Eseme, 32, had already signalled what was coming. World Athletics noted that he ran 9.89 in the semifinal - a Cameroonian national record - before lowering the bar again in the final. So the 9.83 was not a fluke off a single good start; he was the fastest man on the track twice in the same evening.

His own reaction caught the surprise of it. "That was a crazy race! I'm surprised at the time," he said, in comments carried by Free Malaysia Today. And on the conditions that everyone else was complaining about, he simply refused to: "I can't complain about the weather. We all competed in the same environment," he told England Athletics. It is hard to argue with. The rain fell on all eight lanes.

The record that had stood since 1998

Here is the part that gives the run its weight. The Commonwealth Games men's 100m record Eseme broke had belonged to Ato Boldon, the Trinidad and Tobago sprinter, who set it at the 1998 Games in Kuala Lumpur. That is 28 years - a record that outlasted a generation of faster spikes, faster tracks and the entire modern sprinting era, and then fell on one of the wettest nights the Games have seen.

There is one honest gap to flag here, and we would rather flag it than paper over it. The sources we opened and read all agree on who held the old record, where it was set and how long it lasted. None of them printed the exact old time. You will see a specific figure floating around online for Boldon's mark, but because we could not confirm that number on a page we actually read, we are not going to state it as fact. What is solid: the record was Boldon's, from Kuala Lumpur 1998, and it had stood for 28 years until Tuesday night. The precise hundredths of the old mark are something we could not verify, so we are leaving them out rather than guessing.

That caution is the whole point of how this site is supposed to work. A wrong time attributed with confidence is worse than an admitted gap.

The women's 100m, and two near-misses for England

The men were not the only sprinters out in the downpour. In the women's 100m final the same evening, New Zealand's Zoe Hobbs won gold in 10.93 - an Oceanian record of her own - to complete a night when the sprint titles both went south of the equator and across to the Pacific.

For England it was a night of coming close. Amy Hunt took silver in 10.98, less than a tenth off the win, and Imani Lansiquot was fourth in 11.02, per the England Athletics report. Australia's Torrie Lewis rounded out the podium in 10.99. Two English women in the top four of a Commonwealth 100m final is a genuinely strong return; it just happened to land on an evening when the story out front was a Cameroonian rewriting the record book.

It was not only the sprints

The 100m headlines can make you forget how much else was decided on the same waterlogged programme. Reading down the World Athletics report from the night, the theme is clear: this was a record-heavy session in spite of the weather, not because of it.

Canada had a particularly good night in the throws. Camryn Rogers won the women's hammer with 74.91m, a Games record, and Ethan Katzberg took the men's hammer with 80.97m, also a Games record - two circle titles and two records in an evening when the rain made every implement slick.

Australia, meanwhile, kept doing what it has done all week. Eleanor Patterson cleared 1.96m to win the women's high jump with yet another Games record, and Ky Robinson won a hard men's 10,000m. In that race India's Gulveer Singh took silver in 27:49.78, a breakthrough distance medal battled out in the same conditions. Jamaica's Romaine Beckford won the men's high jump on countback at 2.25m, and Demario Prince took the 110m hurdles in 13.17. Kenya, predictably, controlled the men's steeplechase.

None of that made the back-page headline the way a 28-year record did. But it is the fuller picture of a night when, weather notwithstanding, Games records kept falling across the events.

Where the wider Games stand

Step back from Tuesday night and the shape of Glasgow 2026 is familiar to anyone who has watched a Commonwealth Games: Australia out in front, and mostly because of the pool. The 2026 Commonwealth Games medal table on Wikipedia, as it stood at the end of the fifth day of competition, had Australia clear at the top with around 35 golds, the bulk of them won by its swimmers and para-swimmers earlier in the Games. Canada, England and host nation Scotland were the next cluster down.

One caveat, stated plainly: those totals are a snapshot, not a live scoreboard. The table we read was last updated late on 28 July, so by the time you read this the numbers will have moved - the Games run until 2 August, and athletics still has several days to run. Treat the standings as "roughly here at the halfway mark," not as a final count. For a live picture, the official Commonwealth Sport and Glasgow 2026 sites carry the up-to-date tables.

The Games themselves run from 23 July to 2 August, with the track and field programme held entirely at Scotstoun Stadium, per the Games pages on Wikipedia. That athletics window is where the back half of these Games gets loud, and Tuesday's sprint night was the moment it started.

What we could not pin down

In the interest of not overselling a good story, here is the short list of things we deliberately left vague or out:

None of those gaps touches the core of the story, which is as solid as sprint results get: Emmanuel Eseme, 9.83 seconds, a legal wind, a Commonwealth Games record, in the rain. For a governing-body-timed final, cross-checked against a national federation's own report, that is about as firm as a same-week result comes.

Records that survive 28 years usually fall on perfect nights. This one did not get a perfect night. It got a Glasgow one - grey, soaked, and unforgettable for the man who ran through it faster than anyone had at these Games before.

Sources