Gary Kikaya

Gary Kikaya medal table
At the ISTAF 2006 in Berlin
sprinter
Democratic Republic of Congo
African Championships
gold	2006 Bambous	400 m
bronze	2010 Nairobi	400 m
Indoor world championships
bronze	2004 Budapest	400 m

Gary Kikaya (born February 4, 1980 in Lubumbashi ) is a former sprinter from the Democratic Republic of the Congo .

At the age of twelve he moved with his family to Johannesburg , where his father worked as the Congolese ambassador to South Africa. In 1999, Kikaya began his competitive athletic career and moved to the United States in 2001 , where he attended the University of Tennessee .

His international breakthrough came at the World Indoor Championships in Budapest in 2004 , when he won the bronze medal in the 400-meter run there . At the Olympic Games in Athens he reached the semi-finals. In 2005 he won over 400 m at the Bislett Games in Oslo, but missed the finals at the World Championships in Helsinki .

At the 2006 African Championships in Bambous, he won the gold medal in the 400-meter run. In the same year he caused a sensation at the World Athletics Finals in Stuttgart when he ran the 400 m in 44.10 s. He broke the 19-year-old continental record of the Nigerian Innocent Egbunike and achieved the fastest time ever run by a non-American over this distance. Nevertheless, he later retired from the 2007 World Championships in Osaka and the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing in the semifinals.

At the 2010 African Championships in Nairobi, Kikaya won the bronze medal in the 400-meter run.

Gary Kikaya is 1.84 m tall and weighs 75 kg.

Top performances

• 200 m : 20.40 s, June 12, 2006, Karlskrona
• 400 m: 44.10 s, September 9, 2006, Stuttgart

Web links

Commons : Gary Kikaya  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Gary Kikaya in the database of World Athletics (English)
• Gary Kikaya in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Portrait at IAAF - Focus on Athletes ( Memento from May 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), August 26, 2007