SEA Games 2025: South-east Asia’s male sprinters still chasing elusive sub-10sec 100m milestone

BANGKOK – For more than six decades, the SEA Games’ men’s 100m has seen the likes of speedsters Suchart Jairsuraparp and Reanchai Seeharwong of Thailand and Indonesia’s Suryo Agung Wibowo crowned the region’s fastest man.

But even with the evolution of sport science and modern training techniques, one milestone has eluded South-east Asia’s quickest: No one has ever run under 10 seconds at the Games.

The world’s best have long surpassed the mark. Jamaican icon Usain Bolt holds the 100m world record and Olympic record of 9.58sec and 9.63sec respectively. China’s Su Bingtian, who recently announced his retirement, has the Asian record of 9.83sec.

Ahead of the 2025 Games, where track and field events kick off on Dec 11 at Bangkok’s Supachalasai National Stadium, the experts have weighed in on why the region’s best male sprinters have not gone sub-10 and whether it will be breached in Bangkok.

The men’s 100m SEA Games record stands at 10.17sec, set by Suryo Agung in 2009.

While the time would have been respectable decades ago, it now shows the stark gap in standards between South-east Asia and the world.

Former national sprinter U.K. Shyam, 49, who won 100m silver at the 2001 Games and was once Singapore’s national record holder, noted that South-east Asian countries cannot be treated a single uniform entity. Each nation has its own unique situation, systems and ways of supporting athletes, he added.

Those differences still exist today and the assumption cannot be that the whole region works the same way, said Shyam.

He said: “Some countries within the region had training environments that allowed athletes to push towards being world-class at that time... This idea of obtaining world-class results is premised on several complex criteria. How respective national sports associations are run, the standard of coaching knowledge in the country and the cultural values of the country that enable or disincentive athletes from taking up sports as a career choice.”

“Policy cannot bring change if culture in the country doesn’t move along with it,” added Shyam.

He also argued that “genetic potential” is key to a realistic chance of recording world-class timings.

Pointing to Singapore’s former Olympic swimming champion Joseph Schooling, Shyam said: “Someone like Schooling comes along once in 20 to 30 years, perhaps. Even then, it’s a complex interplay of the context, talent and how policies provide training and racing opportunities for the talent.”

Singapore sprint legend C. Kunalan, who won the Republic’s only 100m gold at the Games when he triumphed in Myanmar in 1969, agreed that genes play a part. He also argued that specialised coaching is key.

Said Kunalan: “To reach the highest level, you need to have the right genes then you need to optimise each aspect of training for that event. No two individuals are the same, so it takes time for the coach to decide what needs to be done for each athlete.”

Former Malaysian sprinter Nazmizan Muhammad, a Games gold medallist in the 100m and 200m events in 2003, said that while biology sets the starting line, infrastructure determines how far you can go.

South-east Asian sprinters tend to have less natural explosive power than West African or Caribbean athletes, he noted, adding that this makes sub-10 timings not impossible but harder. Breaking the barrier requires elite coaching, sports science support, proper nutrition, recovery tools and regular competition against the best.

Nazmizan said: “The issue is not one single factor but it’s a combination of biology, training culture, sports science capacity and an overall ecosystem that has not yet reached true high-performance sprinting standards in South-east Asia.”

But most crucially, Nazmizan feels that for the sub-10 to be achieved, the region needed to raise the competitive environment. “If your region only has two or three athletes running (around) 10.30sec, the entire system’s performance ceiling stays low,” he said.

“In Jamaica, the US, or Nigeria, 10.10 is not celebrated, it is the baseline. In South-east Asia, 10.30 is still considered ‘elite’. That limits progress.”

But it is not all doom and gloom, as Shyam feels the gap between the region and the world is narrowing, with many sprinters from South-east Asia now exposed to global competitions and training in highly competitive environments.

Thai superstar Puripol Boonson, who won 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay golds at the Hanoi Games in 2022, will be the favourite in Bangkok.

The 19-year-old has gone closer than ever to breaking that sub-10 ceiling – his personal best of 10.06sec was set at the Asian Games in 2023, while his season’s best is 10.15sec in May.

Malaysia’s Azeem Fahmi, 21, has a personal best of 10.09sec from August 2022, while his season’s best is 10.20sec, although he is not competing in Bangkok due to college commitments.

According to Shyam, spectators in Thailand could see a sub-10 race if race conditions are ideal, including a favourable tailwind, a fast track and strong competition.

If that does not happen in Bangkok, he believes someone will hit the milestone in the near future.

He said: “If we look at Puripol and Azeem, they have competed at world-class competitions since young and Azeem trains and competes in the NCAA system, which is a melting pot of global sprint talent.”

“Look at Shanti (Pereira), she has had consistent exposure to world-class competition since young. It is crucial that athletes can race and train in an environment that is highly competitive from a young age,” he added.

“If I had unlimited resources, I would provide more opportunities for South-east Asian sprinters to train and compete in Europe and the US, where you have training groups of high calibre and also training systems and methods that are advanced.”