For Kenny Bednarek, the first World Athletics Ultimate Championship is not just the biggest meet of 2026, it could be a career-defining one.
The man known as Kung Fu Kenny — the anime aficionado races in custom headbands — is among the favorites in Saturday’s 100m and the favorite in Sunday’s 200m in Budapest, both live on NBC Sports and Peacock.
Either would be the biggest individual race victory of the 27-year-old’s career.
Bednarek already owns two Olympic 200m silver medals and two World Championships 200m silver medals.
In his last two meets, Bednarek ran the world’s fastest 200m times of 2026, each 19.62 seconds.
He has yet to win an individual gold medal. Though the Ultimate Championship awards trophies, not medals, Bednarek acknowledges the gravity of this new, biennial meet.
“We’ve been training just like it’s another championship,” he said. “I feel like this year was worse (more demanding) than last year with what we’ve been doing training-wise. I had a few days where I was close to puking, which I’m one of those athletes that will rarely puke, but coaches got me a few times.”
What’s more, Bednarek is working on a YouTube series — The Ultimate Pursuit — documenting a weekslong European stint culminating with the Ultimate Championship.
The first episode touches on his personal story.
Bednarek, plus fraternal twin Ian, were adopted out of foster care at 4 years old by his mom, Mary Ann. He grew up in small-town Oklahoma and then even smaller-town Wisconsin as a teenager.
“I had a few schools that wanted to recruit me -- University of Oregon, Washington and other big track schools -- and I was obviously very interested, but I spent my first two years of high school fooling around a little bit too much,” he told NBC Sports in 2022. “All I wanted to do was hang around friends and have fun, and I wasn’t really thinking about the bigger picture and what I was going to do outside of high school. Once those offers started coming in during my sophomore and junior year, I started to improve my grades and pay attention in class more. I did a lot of summer school classes during my junior and senior years and actually improved my GPA, but unfortunately, the NCAA didn’t accept the credits from the summer school classes I took.”
So Bednarek went from running for Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, Iowa, as a freshman in 2019, then turning pro and winning his first Olympic medal in Tokyo in 2021, silver in the 200m.
He added runner-up finishes in the half-lap race at the World Championships in 2022 and 2025 and at the Paris Olympics in 2024.
“I’ve always been so close to getting the (200m) gold medal, so that’s a personal thing that I want to accomplish,” he said. “I’ve yet to attain the top of that event, and when I thought I had it, there was always one person, whether it was (Tokyo Olympic gold medalist) Andre (De Grasse), (four-time world 200m champion) Noah (Lyles), or (Paris Olympic gold medalist Letsile) Tebogo.”
Bednarek prioritized the 100m this season and even set a goal to go undefeated, though he has since taken losses.
The only man in the Ultimate Championship 100m field who has run faster than Bednarek since the Paris Games is Oblique Seville, the 2025 World champion from Jamaica.
“The ultimate thing that I want to get is the 100m,” said Bednarek, who ran a personal best 9.79 in August 2025. “Just because I know everybody watches the 100m.”
Bednarek races this weekend in the absence of his fiercest rival, countryman Lyles, who is sidelined due to injury but will be a meet attendee.
Asked to play analyst, Lyles said Bednarek’s chances in the 200m “look very strong” and in the 100m are “plausible.”
Bednarek wanted to run the fastest 200m of his life at his last two meets. He came up five hundredths shy, first into a headwind two weeks ago and then while dealing with a bit of a cold last week.
In a trackside Flotrack interview after the latter, he let it be known what’s going to happen if he executes at the Ultimate Championship.
“I’m going to drop a massive PB,” he said.
