In just his second 100m race of the season, Richard Thompson joined the sub-10-second club in sterling fashion at the Southeast Conference Championships in Auburn, Alabama on Sunday (18).

The 22-year-old native of Cascade, Trinidad & Tobago, dominated the field with a sizzling 9.93 dash, narrowly missing Ato Boldon's 9.92 NCAA record set in 1996. In his last solo outing over the distance, he set a Texas Relays record of 10.00 in early April.

Trindon Holliday, Thompson's teammate at Louisiana State University, was second in 10.05. But Thompson wasn't finished. An hour later he came back to win the 200m as well in 20.23, a huge personal best.

Just a 10.27 performer two years ago, Thompson was fifth in the 100m at the NCAA Championships a year ago but reached his season’s peak a few weeks later at the Trinidad & Tobago national championships where, propelled by a hefty 3.0 m/s wind, he finished second to Darrel Brown in 9.95. In Port-of-Spain he did manage to lower his wind-legal career best to 10.09 in the semis before his collegiate schedule finally caught up with him. After winning the low-key NACAC title in San Salvador, El Salvador, in July (10.33), he didn't advance from the heats at the Pan-American Games in Rio de Janeiro, and didn't move beyond the quarter-finals at the World Championships in Osaka.