Nigeria’s 100m record holder Kanyinsola Ajayi has turned professional and signed with adidas Running, bringing his collegiate career at Auburn University to an end after three seasons.
The 21-year-old will forgo his remaining NCAA eligibility as he moves into the next stage of a career that has gathered pace over the past two seasons.
Ajayi leaves Auburn as the reigning NCAA indoor 60m and outdoor 100m champion.
He won the indoor title in March after running 6.45 seconds, equalling the collegiate record. Three months later, he claimed the NCAA 100m title in Eugene with a wind-assisted 9.72 seconds.
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His most significant performance of the collegiate season came earlier in May when he ran 9.84 seconds at the NCAA East First Round. The time broke Olusoji Fasuba’s 20-year Nigerian record of 9.85 seconds and made Ajayi the second-fastest collegiate athlete in history.
He later matched the national record at the Prefontaine Classic and again at the London Diamond League, where he defeated world champion Oblique Seville.
Ajayi carried that form into the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. He ran 9.90 seconds in difficult conditions to win bronze in the men’s 100m, becoming the first Nigerian man to reach the Commonwealth podium in the event since Fasuba won silver in 2006.
The medal added to a growing senior international record. Ajayi reached the Olympic 100m semi-finals in Paris in 2024 before becoming Nigeria’s first men’s 100m finalist at the World Championships in 18 years when he finished sixth in Tokyo in 2025.
His time at Auburn also produced an NCAA team title, several All-America honours and some of the fastest performances ever recorded by a Nigerian sprinter.
Ajayi now enters the professional ranks as one of the leading members of Nigeria’s new generation of male athletes.
With the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games less than two years away, his next challenge will be turning fast times and major championship finals into medals on the global stage.
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