Kenny Bednarek knows what he wants, if he can just relax: ‘Make money, get gold medals and just run fast'

New York Times

a day ago

Kenny Bednarek knows you are a product of your environment.
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he was adopted at the age of four.
'What made me love track was, as a kid, I didn't have control over my life. I was kind of terrified,' he says. 'Track was something I had control of — the only control I had in my life.
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'All of the hard work I put in, I would get the outcome. It was where I felt most free, where I had no care in the world.
'As soon as the gun went off, I was just running, having fun.'
The 26-year-old is certainly running and having fun now. He has Olympic and World Athletics Championships 200-metre silver medals and this year, won six races at three Grand Slam Track (GST) meets in Kingston, Miami and Philadelphia.
Bednarek clocked a wind-assisted 9.79 seconds in the 100m in Miami before running a wind-legal 200m in 19.84s. At Franklin Field in Philadelphia, he closed out the meet with a 100m personal best (PB) at 9.86s, which was also a franchise record.
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) champion Jordan Anthony is the only other American athlete with sub-10s and sub-20s times over 100m and 200m this year.
'My favourite meet was Miami and it was more because I had to prove to people that the first race (Kingston) wasn't a fluke. But I think the Philly 100m was my favourite. I had a poor reaction time — 0.2s — and I still ended up getting to the top guy at 30 to 40 metres. I didn't panic, and I came out with 9.86s.'
There are few better habits than winning. 'It's getting addicting,' Bednarek says. 'I'm trying to go on a win streak that will give me gold medals. If I get my three golds, then fast times are going to come. That's the sole focus this year — PBs will come when they come — just medals. I've only got three silver ones, and I'm trying to get some golds.'
He wants to win the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay at the World Championships in Tokyo this September. Those medals would be the priceless additions to a 2025 haul which has included three six-figure paydays from GST.
Since turning professional in 2019, he has been part of Star Athletics, the Miami-based training group under coach Dennis Mitchell. 'It's a tense group,' he says. 'Every day is like a race. That's the main reason I'm at this level.'
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'I was getting my butt whooped every single time,' he says of the early days, when American sprinter Justin Gatlin, at the end of his career, was part of the group. Kyree King and Sha'Carri Richardson, now top-level American sprinters, joined in 2019, and the group features Olympic relay medallists Aaron Brown (Canada) and Tee Tee Terry (United States).
'Coming down from running 400m and 200m (in college), I didn't have that aggressiveness to get out of the blocks and the mechanics weren't really there. I had more of that wide-open-stride 400m mechanics.' So he worked on his block starts and acceleration phase.
'With the addition of (American sprinter) Christian Coleman, that's been a big game changer this year for me. The dude is the 60m world-record holder — you already know every single time he steps on that line, he's gonna get out (fast).'
It is a group where 'iron sharpens iron'. He and Coleman 'use' each other to work on their respective weak spots — the 100m start for Bednarek and the end for Coleman — but they are ultimately team-mates.
'We go to work, have fun, we're hurting together, we're all talking s**t together,' he says. 'It's fun.'
You might know Bednarek as the man with the headband, nicknamed 'Kung Fu Kenny'.
'I wanted to have something unique because we're at a point where you got all the Adidas people signed, Nike, Puma — everybody's wearing the same thing.'
He has a designer who makes a bespoke headband for him for each race. 'It's just showing respect to the people out there that we're running in front of.'
At the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene last year, he wore one with 'curve' and 'conqueror' written on either side.
A post shared by Kung Fu Kenny (@kenny_bednarek)
Bednarek won the 200m in 19.89s that day, when there was a 1-2-3 sweep not just for the U.S., but for Star Athletics, too. Courtney Lindsey was second, and King third.
'I'm not a person that really wants to be like, 'Look at me, I'm him', and stuff like that. I just want to go in and handle business.'
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At no point does he namecheck Noah Lyles here, but the comparison with the U.S. No 1 comes easily. Lyles, an average build for a sprinter at 5ft 11in (180cm), is loud and expressive. He always jumps up high before settling into the blocks.
Bednarek, despite being 6ft 2in and physically imposing, is quieter. 'When I get on the line, I always have a bow,' he says. 'I came up with the name Kung Fu Kenny. It ties with my name, and I like kung fu, martial arts, and anime. Kung fu also has a set of values that pertain to me: openness, discipline, respect and dedication.'
Bednarek is one of the very few athletes who have beaten Lyles in his specialist event, the 200m, but three global finals in the past four years have seen Bednarek finish second in the 200m.
In 2021, he was running in the lane outside Andre De Grasse when the Canadian earned his country's first track gold since 1996 and first 200m gold for nearly a century. Bednarek ran a personal best (19.68) for silver, but De Grasse set a national record (19.62).
One year later, Lyles beat him at the World Championships in Eugene, Oregon, running the fourth-fastest 200m ever (19.31). It was a scintillating defence of his world title, and Lyles became only the third man to retain that crown. Bednarek, in 19.77, was beaten by nearly half a second, finishing closer to seventh than to Lyles.
Last summer, Bednarek ran 19.62 in the Olympic final in Paris. He had matched De Grasse's performance from Tokyo and beaten Lyles on the track — the only problem was that Letsile Tebogo ran an African record of 19.46 to take Botswana's first Olympic gold medal.
Bednarek reflects on what he describes as a missed opportunity. 'The biggest thing, the difference between getting first place and second place? It's always me tensing up,' he says.
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'I'm always going to come out of the bend first. That's kind of a given now from the past four years.' He was two-hundredths ahead of Tebogo at the 100m mark in last summer's final.
'I got off the turn, Tebogo was right there next to me, kind of using me as a rabbit. That shocked me, so then I tried to do a little bit too much — I would try to muscle it out — and then I started decelerating.
'That's when he got the edge over me and then he ran his 19.4s. If I ended up sticking to my race plan, I should have won.'
It is the age-old sprinting principle that the winner is not the one who can go the fastest but who slows down the least and can hold their form best.
'My coach was trying to get it through my head like, 'Hey, you need to relax'. (I'd say) 'Yeah, yeah, I get it', but then, once the gun went off, I was always like, 'OK, screw it. I'm gonna just try to go'.'
None of this is said with even a hint of bitterness. 'He (Tebogo) was also fighting for his mom. She passed away last year. I was happy for him that he got the gold medal. Now he's a big thing in Botswana.'
Bednarek speaks with a softness that belies his size and power. His tete-a-tete with Tebogo continued after the Olympics when the pair raced at the Diamond League meets in Zurich and Brussels.
Tebogo ran him down in Zurich when Bednarek tied up again. The American was one-tenth clear at halfway, down to two-hundredths at 150m, and Tebogo beat him on the line.
The outcome was positive — he lowered his PB to 19.57 — but he wanted even more.
Things clicked at the Diamond League finals in Brussels, where he held Tebogo off to win by more than one-tenth of a second — daylight in sprinting terms. 'The only thing I was thinking about coming off the bend is, 'Relax, relax, relax'.
'That's what I've been working on this whole past off-season. There's no reason to try to press when I can just use my (long) levers to my advantage. I fixed the end of my race in the 200m. I improved my start, too, so if I put those things together, nobody's going to beat me.'
Bednarek's route to the top was unconventional. He wanted to go to the University of Oregon but his grades were not good enough.
'I was a kid in high school. I would do the bare minimum because I didn't really feel like it was a focal point or it was something important to me,' he says.
It meant that, despite clocking 20.43s for 200m and repeatedly going sub-47 seconds over 400m as a high school senior, he had to go to Indian Hills junior college for a year.
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There, he worked harder and ran even faster — 44.73s for 400m and sub-20s twice in the 200m, including a heavily wind-assisted 19.49s. 'That's when the agents started hitting me up. I was like, 'I guess I'm going pro now'.'
After winning 16 collegiate races in 2019, he first raced as a pro that June. Bednarek describes his 200m at the Rabat Diamond League and a 400m in Ostrava, the Czech Republic, as ''welcome to the pros, rookie' moments'.
He was in good shape from his college season but the elites had started later because that year's World Championships in Doha, Qatar, were not until late September.
'I'm looking at the times and I'm like, 'Oh, I'm about to roll everybody up. They're running slow',' he says. 'I got into the race, started running… and started dying. That's when you see zoom, zoom, zoom (as others run past you).'
He came fourth in Morocco and sixth in Ostrava.
Despite a hamstring issue, and early signs that his competitive edge can spill into over-exertion, he made his first senior U.S. team for the World Championships.
'I actually didn't want to go. (After nationals) I was like, 'OK, I can finally rest, go home, recover the hamstring'. Then they called me and told me I made the team, so I was, like, 'Damn, I've got to keep going'.
'I went to Doha in the mindset of, 'I'm just here for experience'. I didn't even make it past the first round.' He came seventh out of eight in his 200m heat in 21.5s, his slowest time in that distance all year.
He is one of the forgotten men from the 100m final in Paris last August, which was his first individual appearance over that distance at a global championships after running a 9.87s PB at U.S. trials to make the team.
Lyles edged out Jamaica's Kishane Thompson by five-thousandths to take gold in the deepest men's 100m Olympic final. Bednarek was the fastest seventh-place ever.
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'Initially, I was quite upset,' he says, 'but after a few days of thinking about it, there were good things. I didn't have the perfect race or execute the way that I wanted to, but I still ran 9.88 — that says a lot about me.
'If I do that under those circumstances, what can I do when I actually stick to my race plan? I kind of wanted it too badly. I tried to do something that I usually don't do and I tensed up. I had a good start and felt like I didn't.'
Sprinting might look flat-out from the start but athletes need to build through the phases. 'When I'm more relaxed, then my top-end speed can kick in and I reel people in, but I didn't do that at all in the final.
'I locked up my whole body. My acceleration phase wasn't where it needed to be going to 50m and 60m. I was green, I was the newbie going into the finals, and it was a learning experience.'
He learned, too, from the 4x100m relay, where the U.S. men continued their record of disqualifying, further stretching their Olympic medal drought in the event to at least 24 years (since silver at Athens 2004).
'I don't know what happened. We all felt good about it (before the race). I just made a slight mistake.'
Bednarek, on the second leg, took off too early as Coleman led off around the bend. They were disqualified for passing the baton outside the changeover zone.
'The thing that will fix all our problems is just consistency in training,' he says. 'If we say, 'Hey, this is the team, we need to start practising a couple months before', then I think everything will be a lot better.'
Bednarek's biggest limitation in recent years has been injuries. He reels off a list including pulled hamstrings and a broken toe. Last year, his season featured 24 races across six months.
'A healthy Kenny is a dangerous Kenny, because with me not dealing with all this little BS, I can put everything together and then I'll be dominant,' he says.
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In 2021, he clocked 10 wind-legal, sub-20s 200m performances, the most by any athlete in a single season. 'That just comes with the recovery factor. I'm always going to do a workout, and excel at it, but to survive at this level, you have to take care of your body.'
It is why he eats gluten-free and organic now, and has installed a sauna, cold plunge, red-light therapy and a PEMF (pulsed electromagnetic field therapy) machine at home.
'It's a lot of money, but at the end of the day, our body is an investment,' he says. 'Track and field is not forever, so you might as well put the money down, recover and get ready for the next day and try to survive.
'Make money, get gold medals and just run fast.'
He can cross 'make money' and 'run fast' off the list this year. Now, for those 'three golds', he just needs to relax.