Kirani James

Sir Kirani Zeno James GCNG CBE COG (born 1 September 1992) is a Grenadian professional sprinter who specializes in the 400 metres.

James received an athletic scholarship at the University of Alabama and won back-to-back NCAA Outdoor Championship titles in his first two years.

James is one of only eleven athletes (along with Valerie Adams, Usain Bolt, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Armand Duplantis, Jacques Freitag, Yelena Isinbayeva, Faith Kipyegon, Jana Pittman, Dani Samuels, and David Storl) to win World Championship titles at the youth, junior, and senior levels of an athletic event.

[10] He accepted a scholarship offer from Alabama and in his first-ever appearance on an indoor track he ran a 45.79 in the 400 meters, placing first and breaking the 10-year-old school record of 46.46 held by Cori Loving.

He claimed the gold medal over 400 m at the 2010 World Junior Championships in Athletics, but stated he was only running for times and was not satisfied with his winning performance of 45.89 seconds.

This left only Michael Johnson and Kerron Clement as the faster athletes indoors, and also bettered LaShawn Merritt's previous world best junior time of 44.93 seconds.

[19] At the 2011 World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, both James and fellow Grenadian runner Rondell Bartholomew made the finals of the 400 metres event.

At the end of the race, James exchanged name tags with double-amputee runner Oscar Pistorius as a sign of respect for him.

[24] Also upon his arrival the Prime Minister, Keith Mitchell announced Mr. James would be bequeathed government bonds totaling up to EC500,000, a commemorative stamp be crafted in his honor, a new stadium be named for him, and that he would be appointed a tourism ambassador.

On 17 November 2014, James and Jamaica's Kaliese Spencer were named the sportsman and sportswoman of the year respectively by the Caribbean Sports Journalists' Association.

[29] At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Kirani James earned a bronze medal in the Men's 400m finals, finishing 3rd behind Colombia's Anthony Zambrano (Silver) and Steven Gardiner of The Bahamas (Gold).