Gabby Thomas ran 21.70 seconds for 200 metres at the inaugural USATF Lone Star Grand Prix in College Station, Texas on Saturday, the fastest time any woman has set in the event this year. The reigning Olympic 200m champion said it was supposed to be her year to ‘just have fun.’
That 21.70 beats by 0.13 seconds the mark she ran to win Olympic gold at Paris 2024 and falls 0.10 short of her personal best of 21.60, set in 2023. Fellow American Kayla White finished second in 22.07, with Nigeria’s Favour Ofili third in 22.15.
A Time Faster Than Olympic Gold
The Lone Star Grand Prix was the first US-based World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting of 2026, a tier below the Diamond League. Saturday’s programme at Cushing Stadium, Texas A&M’s 2,200-seat outdoor track venue, excluded events longer than 800 metres. Temperatures reached 88 degrees Fahrenheit with a 77-degree dew point; the wind reading in the women’s 200m was +0.7 metres per second, legal for records.
The previous 2026 world best in the event had been 21.86, run by Julien Alfred, St. Lucia’s reigning Olympic 100m champion, on April 30 in Austin. Thomas cut that by 0.16 seconds. Saturday’s 21.70 was the first sub-21.80 clocking in the women’s 200m this season. She arrived in College Station five weeks after running 10.95 for 100 metres at the Botswana Golden Grand Prix in Gaborone, the first wind-legal sub-11 clocking of her career. She seized the lead on the bend and held the gap to the line, with White 37 hundredths of a second back.
I’m a little surprised by the time, but I’ve been training hard. I had a great little tour in Africa and now the hard work is paying off. I’m enjoying having an ‘off’ year where there’s not the pressure of an Olympics or World Championships, so I’m just having fun this season.
Thomas’s coach throughout this comeback has been Tonja Buford-Bailey, who guided her through rehabilitation and back to Saturday’s start line.
The Year She Couldn’t Reach Tokyo
An Achilles tendon injury that surfaced in May 2025 and was re-aggravated in July defined the whole of last season. Thomas forced herself to a third-place finish at the USATF Outdoor Championships in August, qualifying for the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo by one-thousandth of a second with a time of 21.95. Then she and Buford-Bailey decided the Achilles could not safely carry her through championship rounds; Thomas announced her withdrawal in early September.
While Thomas sat out, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden swept the sprint double at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, running 10.61 in the 100m to set the championships record and collecting the 200m title alongside it. Thomas had collected three golds at Paris 2024, the 200m, the 4x100m, and the 4x400m relay, along with a bronze from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. An individual World Championships title had never arrived; silver in Budapest in 2023 was the closest she had come.
“The toughest thing about having to drop out of Tokyo last year was just the frustrations of knowing that I worked all year to run really well in Japan,” Thomas told Athletics Weekly in April. She said the experience had made her more resilient: “You can bounce back from it and become an even better athlete afterwards.”
She did not race in any Diamond League events after the USATF Outdoor Championships, ending 2025 ranked fourth in the world at 200m, behind Julien Alfred (21.71), Jefferson-Wooden (21.84), and McKenzie Long (21.93).
| Season | Best 200m Time | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 21.60 | Personal best; World Championships silver in Budapest |
| 2024 | 21.83 | Olympic 200m gold, Paris |
| 2025 | 21.95 | Achilles injury; withdrew from World Championships, Tokyo |
| 2026 | 21.70 | 2026 world lead, Lone Star Grand Prix |
Rebuilding Across Africa
Thomas opened 2026 carefully. At the Texas Relays in Austin on April 4, she ran 11.00 seconds for 100 metres, equalling her personal best in the event, and anchored a 4x400m relay leg. She posted afterward that there was “lots of work to do this season.”
What followed was her first time competing in Africa, a three-stop circuit she chose to build competition fitness away from the season’s highest-profile meets before bringing the times home. The legs ran in sequence:
- Addis Ababa Grand Prix, April 18 (Ethiopia): Won the 100m in 11.13 and the 200m in 22.15, both victories at altitude on a new track facility.
- Kip Keino Classic, April 24 (Nairobi, Kenya): A 1.1 metres-per-second headwind in the 100m held her to 11.01, but she still won the race.
- Botswana Golden Grand Prix, April 26 (Gaborone): Ran 10.95 for 100m into a slight headwind, her fastest effort of the African leg.
American sprinter Cambrea Sturgis, who trained alongside Thomas through the circuit, finished behind her at each stop. Thomas had said she wanted to be fully recovered from the injury before returning to the US circuit; four wins across three African cities later, the Achilles was holding up.
Tate Taylor and 19.97
The inaugural Lone Star Grand Prix replaced the USATF NYC Grand Prix, which last ran in 2024. After USATF could not make the finances work in New York, the meeting moved to College Station with Texas beef producer 44 Farms as a lead backer. The programme excluded events longer than 800 metres, a format suited to the Texas summer heat. Saturday was the meet’s first edition.
Thomas was not the only story at Cushing Stadium. In the men’s 200m, 18-year-old Tate Taylor ran 19.97 seconds, becoming only the second American high schooler in history to break 20 seconds in the event. The first was Erriyon Knighton, who set his high school best of 19.49 in 2022 before turning professional. Taylor, committed to Texas Tech University for the fall, finished second; Zimbabwe’s Makanakaishe Charamba, an Olympic 200m finalist, won in a personal best of 19.88. The time moved him to equal sixth on the world under-20 all-time list, and he also holds the US high school 100m record at 9.92.
Elsewhere in the programme, American sprinter Trayvon Bromell won the men’s 100m in 9.85, but a wind reading of +3.8 metres per second placed the result outside legal record territory. World 100m champion Oblique Seville of Jamaica finished third in that race. Jamaica’s Sabrina Dockery, 19, won the women’s 100m in a personal best of 10.92, breaking 11 seconds for the first time.
Budapest in September
Thomas confirmed in April that she intends to run the 200m at the World Ultimate Championships in Budapest, scheduled for September. The meet carries a $10 million prize pool, with $150,000 for each event winner, and will draw the sprint field that matters most in a season without a World Athletics Championships or Olympics.
The Diamond League circuit occupies the weeks ahead, giving Thomas competitive rounds against world-ranking fields. She also co-owns Athlos, the women-only track league founded with investor Alexis Ohanian, one of several commercial ventures she has built alongside her competitive career. Jefferson-Wooden, the reigning world sprint champion, will almost certainly share the track with Thomas in September.
Her personal best of 21.60 sits 0.10 seconds ahead of Saturday’s mark. The championships are in September.
