The most effective moments of the monitor and subject 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 Previous!
THOMAS JONES TAKES DOWN MICHAEL KISH.
The #PennRelays 70+ 100m sprint didn’t disappoint.
Protection introduced by @on_running pic.twitter.com/THAQ7QPHAF
— FloTrack (@FloTrack) April 24, 2025
The 71-year-old topped the remainder of the lads’s 70+ division by almost 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 severe factors within the world’s coolest grandpa competitors. Let’s be sincere, the road “my grandpa’s quicker than you” hits totally different when it’s really true.
To place his efficiency in perspective, Jones reached a high velocity of almost 28 km/h. That’s sensational for any age, however at 71? Unreal. His time was simply shy of the lads’s 70+ world report of 12.59 seconds, set by fellow American masters sprinter Damien Leake in 2023.
Jones has been sprinting for almost 4 many years and has collected numerous international medals for Group USA within the males’s 60m (indoor), 100m, and 4x400m relay occasions on the World Masters Championships.
