Justin Gatlin led a 1-2-3-4 US sweep in the 200m Thursday at the World Athletics Championships, the highlight of another great day for the Americans and the second gold of a possible triple for the 100m champion.
Michelle Perry won the 100m hurdles and triple jumper Walter Davis continued the golden US run even before Gatlin led Wallace Spearmon, defending champion John Capel and Tyson Gay across the line in 20.04 seconds.
Gatlin kneeled in celebration and put one finger up in the air, in case anyone in the 40,000-capacity Olympic Stadium still had a doubt he was the star of the championships.
PHOTO: AP
Afterward, all four sprinters huddled together in celebration.
Gatlin will seek a sprint triple during Saturday's final in the 400m relay.
Perry took the lead when Olympic champion and fellow American Joanna Hayes stumbled at the penultimate hurdle and won ahead of Jamaicans Delloreen Ennis-London and Brigitte Foster-Hylton.
"I knew today, whatever it took, I would win," said Perry, who will go back to combining hurdles with heptathlon next year. "It was my time regardless. I was strongest at the end."
Davis came out of nowhere to add another gold for the Americans with a season's best leap of 17.57m, edging Yoandri Betanzos of Cuba and Marian Oprea of Romania.
Rens Blom of the Netherlands denied another US gold when he won the pole vault with a jump of 5.80m, 5cm higher than Brad Walker. Russia's Pavel Gerasimov took bronze.
"I got lucky on 5.65," said Blom, who barely cleared his second attempt as the bar shot up, danced around and magically stayed put. "I was entitled to have some luck."
Defending champion Giuseppe Gibilisco of Italy, Australian 2001 world champion Dmitri Markov and 2000 Olympic champion Nick Hysong went out early in the competition.
Highlighting the US sprint domination, four-time and defending champion Allen Johnson was the first of three teammates making in the final of the 110m hurdles, setting the best time of all qualifiers with 13.23 seconds.
Behind Jamaica's Maurice Wignall, Terrence Trammell set the third time. France's Ladji Doucoure and Olympic champion Liu Xiang also qualified ahead of American Joel Brown, who took the last spot in the final.
Allyson Felix led a US trio into the women's final of the 200m.
France's Christine Arron led the qualifiers into the 200m final with the fastest time of 22.45 seconds, but 19-year-old Felix won her semifinal and Rachelle Boone-Smith and LaTasha Colander also went through, along with Olympic champion Veronica Campbell.
"I just didn't want to push it too hard, just wanted to get a good lane for the final," Felix said.
The US team has nine golds and a total of 15 medals. Ethiopia has two golds and a total of five, with Sweden in third place with two golds and a bronze.
Also, Franka Dietzsch of Germany won the gold medal in the women's discus, ahead of Natalya Sadova of Russia and Vera Pospisilova-Cechlova of the Czech Republic.
Moroccan-born Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain successfully continued the quest for a middle distance double, winning his 800m heat ahead of his South African rival Mbulaeni Mulaudzi less than 24 hours after taking gold in the 1,500m. Olympic champion Yuriy Borzakovskiy of Russia also easily advanced.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier