Jamilia Bernhardsson

Happy monumental birthday to Sweden’s sprinter Jamilia Bernhardsson, who three weeks ago became the fastest woman in the country over 200m for one afternoon.

At the Swedish Championships in Uppsala on 25 July, Jamilia ran 23.16 in her 200m heat. It was a lifetime best, and it was the quickest qualifying time in the entire field, senior athletes included. She came back the next day and took the silver medal in the final. She was seventeen years old.

That 23.16 puts her second on the Swedish U20 all-time list, behind only Irene Ekelund, and ninth on the Swedish women’s all-time 200m list across every age group there has ever been. Her season had already produced a 200m win at the Nordic Championships in Copenhagen in May, a senior national indoor silver in March, and two more lifetime bests at the junior indoor championships in Växjö, over 60m and over 400m. And she has been at this level for a while: EYOF bronze over 200m in Skopje last summer, the Swedish U18 double over 100m and 200m at Ljungby a month later, and a Swedish 4x100m leg at the European Team Championships Super League in Madrid at sixteen.

Sprinters who arrive early often arrive and stay put. Jamilia has taken her 200m from 23.55 to 23.37 to 23.16 across three consecutive seasons, and the newest one came in the deepest field she has ever been in, in a heat where the only instruction was to qualify. She races for Kalmar SK, out of Fredriksskans on the Baltic coast, and everything above happened before her eighteenth birthday.

Grattis på födelsedagen, Jamilia! Har den äran att gratulera, och må du leva uti hundrade år. Ett fyrfaldigt leve: hurra, hurra, hurra, hurra! 🎂🎁🎉🫶🫶🇸🇪