World Championships in Athletics in 2007 and 2009. He also finished third at the 2008 Summer Olympics
, but was later disqualified for stepping out of his lane.
Career
Spearmon is a graduate of
NCAA Outdoor title in 2004 and 2005 as well as the NCAA Indoor 200 m title in 2005. In August 2005, he won the silver medal in the 200 m at the 2005 World Championships and in August 2007, he won the bronze medal at the 2007 World Championships. Spearmon won the 200 m at the USA outdoor athletics championships in 2006 and finished second in 2007. At the 2009 World Championships in Berlin he won another bronze. He ran a world best time of 31.88 for the 300 m indoors in February 2006.[2]
His personal best in the 200 m is 19.65 seconds. This time (achieved in
Andre de Grasse (19.62), Xavier Carter (19.63), and Reynier Mena (19.63) have run faster. Despite the fact that he normally runs a "slower" first half of his 200 m races and goes on to pass people down the stretch, his 100 meters personal best is 9.96 s. He set that mark running in Shanghai
on September 28, 2007, beating 100 m world champion Tyson Gay.
At the start of the 2012 season, he broke Michael Johnson's 200 m meet record at the Drake Relays with a run of 20.02 seconds.[8] He finished fourth in the 200 metres final at the 2012 London Olympics. His time of 19.90 seconds was 6/100 of a second outside of a medal placing.
Spearmon finished 21st at the 2013 World Championships, running a time of 20.66 seconds in the semi-final .
At a meeting in Edmonton in July, 2014, Spearmon tested positive for
USADA accepted the excuse so it was treated as a minor violation. On September 19, 2014, it was announced he would receive a 3-month suspension, backdated to August 27.[9]
He is good friends with fellow sprinter Usain Bolt; they are known for their jokes and good friendship.
On an April 2011 episode of MythBusters, he worked with Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman to investigate the possibility of a human running on water. In May 2013 he returned to the show to race 30 ft against a race car.