NAIROBI, Kenya, March 11, 2025 – Commonwealth Games champion Ferdinand Omanyala will be in contention at the Athletics South Africa (ASA) Grand Prix in Pretoria on Wednesday evening.
Omanyala will be running in the men’s 100m where he will be competing against six other sprinters, including fellow countryman, Mark Otieno.
Other foreigners in the race include Zimbabwe’s Makusha Ngoni and Boitshwarelo Mothusi of Botswana.
After Wednesday’s race, Omanyala will then shift focus to the ASA Grand Prix II, set for Johannesburg on March 19.
The two competitions will be first international races this year for Africa’s fastest man since September last year when he clocked 10.07 to win the men’s 100m in Brussels.
The 2022 African champion was in action at last weekend’s second leg of the Athletics Kenya (AK) Track and Field Weekend meeting in Thika where he clocked 10.02 to win Heat 2 of the men’s 100m.
However, the competition seemed to be more of a warm up for Omanyala who did not run in the final.
His compatriot, Otieno, will also be running in his first international race since August when he competed at the Wieslaw Maniak Memorial in Poland.
On that occasion, the former national champion clocked 10.60 to finish third.
Otieno also competed in his first-ever international assignment for the country ever since he was slapped with a two-year doping ban.
He clocked 10.42 to finish fifth in the semi-final of the men’s 100m at the African Championships in Douala, Cameroon in June last year.
