Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Kenny Bednarek have shared a training group in Central Florida for three years. Now they share something new: the title of World Ultimate champion in the 100m.
Jefferson-Wooden extended her reign as the new queen of the sprints, while Bednarek earned the biggest individual race win of his career at the debut World Ultimate Championship in Budapest on Saturday.
Jefferson-Wooden clocked 10.62 seconds, one hundredth off her personal best from winning the 2025 World title. She said Saturday was the best 100m of her life. It came in slower conditions than the 2025 Worlds — cooler weather and into a .2 meter/second headwind versus a .3 tailwind last September.
“When I got to that start line today, I told myself that this is your moment and you need to stand in it,” Jefferson-Wooden told NBC Sports’ Lewis Johnson. “So when that gun went off, I was like, you better execute like your life depends on it, and that’s what I did.”
ULTIMATE CHAMPIONSHIP: Results | Broadcast Schedule
Julien Alfred, the 2024 Olympic gold medalist from Saint Lucia, was a distant runner-up in 10.74, followed by 2024 Olympic silver medalist Sha’Carri Richardson in 10.76.
Jefferson-Wooden, who has one 100m defeat since taking bronze at the Paris Games, is the fourth-fastest woman in history behind American Florence Griffith Joyner (world record 10.49) and Jamaicans Elaine Thompson-Herah (10.54) and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (10.60).
Bednarek, a two-time Olympic 200m silver medalist, ran 9.85 to upset 2025 World champion Oblique Seville of Jamaica by five hundredths
They raced in the absence of 2024 Olympic 100m gold medalist Noah Lyles, who is out injured but remains the world’s fastest man of 2026 with a best time of 9.79.
Bednarek, better known for his 200m accolades, progressed in the 100m in recent seasons. He was seventh at the 2024 Olympics, then fourth at the 2025 Worlds, where he was done in by the slowest start in the field.
“It’s more of a relief thing just because silver, silver, silver (in the 200m) over the few years,” the 27-year-old known as Kung Fu Kenny, as he races in a headband, told LetsRun.com. “To get a win over a good event like this, it definitely means a lot because it just proves that I’m capable of doing it and I belong here.”
The Ultimate Championship finishes Sunday, live on NBC and Peacock from 12-3 p.m. ET. Races include the men’s and women’s 200m (with Bednarek and Jefferson-Wooden) and 400m hurdles and the men’s 1500m.
The Ultimate Championship, which will be biennial, gathers 2024 Olympic gold medalists, 2025 World champions and the rest of the highest-ranked athletes with no limits on athletes per country. Event winners receive $150,000, part of an overall prize pool of $10 million — which World Athletics calls the richest in the history of the sport.
Also Saturday, Collen Kebinatshipi of Botswana ran the joint-fifth-fastest 400m in history — 43.39 seconds — to win by 76 hundredths over American Rai Benjamin, the 2024 Olympic 400m hurdles gold medalist who is racing both events this weekend.
Kebinatshipi, the 2025 World champion, has broken 44 seconds on six occasions in 2026, the most for one year in history.
Swiss Audrey Werro capped a breakout, undefeated season by taking the women’s 800m in 1:55.88, prevailing comfortably by 38 hundredths over 2024 Olympic gold medalist Keely Hodgkinson of Great Britain.
Werro, 22, was the 33rd-fastest woman in history as of June 6. Then she ran the third-, fourth- and fifth-fastest times in history, all of which are the fastest since the world record of 1:53.28 was set in 1983.
In the women’s 400m, 2024 Olympic gold medalist Marileidy Paulino of the Dominican Republic extended her undefeated season, winning in 49.07.
American Sydney Levrone, the 2025 World champion in 47.78, did not race this season as she had daughter Savannah in July.
Sandi Morris earned the biggest outdoor pole vault title of her decade-plus career by clearing 4.90 meters to top fellow American Hana Moll, who is 13 years younger, on countback.
Morris, 34, previously won silver medals at the Olympics in 2016 and the World Outdoor Championships in 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2025.
