USATF Flashback: Gail Devers’ 60-meter performance in 1993 ‘was a smoker’

Gail Devers’ 60-meter performance in 1993 ‘was a smoker’

The 115th edition of what’s now called the USATF Indoor Track and Field Championships comes to Spokane’s new Podium facility Saturday and Sunday. This week, we’ll make take a brief tour through the storied event’s history.

Gail Devers already had the first of her three Olympic gold medals, but she’d never won at the USATF Indoor until blasting through 60 meters on 6.99 seconds at Madison Square Garden in 1993 – then an American Record and still the meet standard.

“That was a smoker,” her coach, Bob Kersee, said with admiration.

Just two weeks later at the World Indoor Championships, the Seattle-born Devers took the AR down to 6.95 – and took down world record holder Irina Privalova of Russia in the process. It was the start of a very good year that concluded outdoors with world championships both in both the 100 meters and the 100 hurdles.

Devers would win the last of her U.S. indoor titles in 2004 – the same year she competed in her fifth Olympic Games.