World Athletics Championships: Australian results, news, updates, Rohan Browning 100m heats

Australia’s fastest man has fired a warning shot at the World Championships, ending a 28-year wait at the event before declaring he’s ready to deliver the ‘extraordinary’.

Australia's Rohan Browning crosses the finish line second in the men's 100m heats. Picture: AFP

Rohan Browning couldn’t have been happier being ordinary because by doing that he broke a 28-year world championship drought for Australia.

Sydney’s ‘Flying Mullet’ looked impressive, cruising through his 100m heat to finish second in 10.11sec and declared afterwards he was now ready to go from “ordinary to extraordinary”.

“The things I have to do are all ordinary but if I do them all together then hopefully I can run at an extraordinary level,” Browning said. “I’m not sure if that’s true but I’m going to roll with it.

“At the end of the day you can only ask yourself to be ordinary and then rise to the occasion.”

The ordinary theme was focused on replicating the collective average time of his performances all season which he’d calculated was going to be enough to progress through to the semi-finals.

“That (10.11) was like literally my average run for the year and that’s what I needed,” said Browning, whose best this year was 10.02sec in Brisbane in April.

“I have to lift a bit for the semi to get into the final and be really competitive but it was always about being ordinary in the heat and being really average and just replicating what I know I can do.”

Australia's Rohan Browning crosses the finish line second in the men's 100m heats. Picture: AFP

Browning, 25, is the first Australian through to a 100m semi-final at a world championship since Damien Marsh in Gothenburg, Sweden, back in 1995.

He now sets his sights on joining Paul Narracott in the history books as he is the only Australian to make a world championships final, finishing seventh in Helsinki in 1983.

Browning has been in this position before, he won his heat at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics in 10.01sec but couldn’t replicate the performance in the semi-final where he ran 10.09sec.

That fact has been rammed home to him over the past couple of months in Europe by his roommate pole vaulter Kurtis Marschall.

“I’m totally cognisant that it doesn’t end with the heat,” Browning said. “I’ve been rooming with Kurtis Marschall for the last few weeks and he’s been calling me the ‘King of the Heat’.

“I’m sick of winning the heat and then getting knocked out in the semis. I’m hoping to go all the way.”

Jamaica’s Oblique Seville was the fastest through to the semi-finals with a personal best 9.86sec with American superstar Noah Lyles next on 9.95sec.

Defending champion Fred Kerley clocked 9.99sec in his heat while Olympic champion Marcell Jacobs just scraped through, finishing third in 10.15sec.