Celebrity Friday: The Borlée Twins of Belgium

Jonathan and Kevin Borlée are 24-year-old twin athletes from Belgium who are world-class sprinters. On Monday, they placed 5th and 6th in the 400m dash at the London Olympics behind eventual winner Kirani James of Grenada. Amazingly, their sister Olivia is a silver Olympic medalist (4x100m relay at the 2008 Beijing Olympics).

There's just something about the Borlée brothers that I can't keep my eyes off them. They are Belgium's most prominent athletes and they are today's subject of Celebrity Friday.

Olympiad XXX: 19yo Wins Grenada's 1st Ever Gold

19-year-old athletic sensation Kirani James of my home country of Grenada won the gold medal in the Men's 400m dash at the London Olympics last night. It was Grenada's first medal of any kind despite competing in every Summer Olympics since 1984. James, although only 19, is the reigning World Champion in the 400m and became the first non-American man to complete the one-lap race in under 44 seconds, finishing in 43.94s.

Winning the silver was 18-year-old Luguelin Santos of the Dominican Republic and the bronze medalist was Lalonde Gordon of Trinidad and Tobago completing a Caribbean sweep of the event. Also in the final race was the unusual site of twin brothers Kevin and Jonathan Borlée of Belgium, who finished 5th and 6th just 0.02s apart from each other.

But the night belonged to James who in the last few years has begun to put Grenada on the map for his prowess in the 400 meters in a similar way to how Jamaica is now known for world-class sprinters (and deep seated homophobia!)

Caribbean runners (or runners for other countries who are of Caribbean descent) have been dominating the sprints at this year's Olympics with Jamaicans winning both the men's and women's 100m.

Teenager Wins 400m Gold Medal for Grenada

Kirani James, left, beat World Champion LaShawn Merritt at the tape in the 400m
Photo credit: Andy Lyons/Getty Images

Somehow I missed this amazing story from two weeks ago. An 18-year-old boy named Kirani James from my home island countryof Grenada (which has a population of just over 100,000 people, smaller than most cities in the United States) won the 400m gold at the recent World Track and Field Championships by beating an Olympic champion in the event!

But that was not the only amazing story of this 400 meter race. Another Grenadian runner, Rondell Bartholomew, placed sixth and there were twin brothers from Belgium that finished 3rd and 5th!

The Guardian has a great article on the race:

It takes something special to steal the headlines from an Olympic champion who has just returned from a 21-month ban because he accidentally ingested steroids while taking penis-enlargement pills. And Kirani James did just that. He beat LaShawn Merritt, who returned to the track after his suspension in July, in one of the great 400m races in the history of the world championships. James turns 19 on Saturday and his life is never going to be the same again.

If James's name had not been noted before he ran in Daegu, that is hardly surprising. The world 400m champion has run only four professional races in his career, three of them in the past three days. People who like easy labels are already calling him the new Usain Bolt but that does not quite fit. He is neither as flamboyant nor as fast. The first of those differences is not going to change but the second surely will.

The race had the kind of finish that is going to be rerun in the highlights reels for years to come. Merritt came into the home straight with a lead but James ran him down with 50 metres to go. The two were shoulder to shoulder as they came up to the line but James got himself half a stride in front and won by three hundredths of a second, despite Merritt's despairing dip of the head. His winning time of 44.60sec was a personal best, though it is unlikely to be so for long. The Belgian Kevin Borlée took bronze, completing a colourful cast of medal winners. His identical twin, Jonathan, was fifth.

James comes from Grenada and is their first world championship medallist. When he was 16 he was running the 400m in 45.24, a time that would easily have been good enough to earn a place in the final here. 

Now, that is great writing, and a great story. Congratulations, Kirani! (About those Belgian Borlée twins, expect to see them again on this blog in the near future, as either Eye Candy or Celebrity Friday).