Athlete Yohan Blake spotted wearing a Richard Mille

Jamaican sprint legend Yohan Blake was recently spotted wearing a Richard Mille RM 59-01 Tourbillon fitted with a vivid yellow rubber strap — a colour choice that reads as a deliberate nod to his Jamaican roots and his track persona, the self-styled 'Beast' of world sprinting.

The Richard Mille RM 59-01 is a manual-winding tourbillon built around the calibre RM59-01, a skeletonised movement constructed from grade 5 titanium and ARCAP alloy components. The baseplate and bridges are machined to tolerances normally reserved for aeronautical parts, and the entire assembly is designed to withstand the extraordinary g-forces and wrist vibrations experienced by a competitive sprinter mid-race. The tonneau-shaped case measures approximately 50.15mm × 42.70mm and is crafted in titanium with a carbon TPT or similar composite material depending on the specific iteration — keeping the total weight remarkably low despite the mechanical complexity inside.

The RM 59-01 occupies a significant place in Richard Mille's catalogue as a piece conceived explicitly around athletic performance rather than traditional horological ceremony. Richard Mille has long argued that a tourbillon worn by a sprinting world champion is the ultimate torture test for a movement, and the RM 59 series was engineered with that philosophy at its core. Production numbers are extremely limited, placing it firmly in the upper tier of the brand's collector hierarchy.

Blake's relationship with Richard Mille is well established. The brand has historically aligned itself with elite Jamaican track athletes, and Blake has been seen in multiple RM references over the years. His choice of yellow strap detailing reinforces the personal, expressive way top-tier athletes tend to configure their Richard Mille pieces — the interchangeable strap system is one of the brand's practical signatures.

On the market, the Richard Mille RM 59-01 commands serious money. Retail pricing sits well above the £370,000 mark cited at the time of this sighting, and grey-market values reflect the piece's scarcity and demand among both sports collectors and serious horology enthusiasts. For a watch designed to run a sub-10-second hundred metres on the wrist of a world champion, that premium is arguably the point.