LaShawn Merritt posted his second upset of the year over the world’s supposed fastest 400m runner, pulling away from Jeremy Wariner in the final 150m to win the US Olympic track and field trials on Thursday.
Merritt finished in 44 seconds flat, defeating Wariner by 0.20.
Earning the third spot was national indoor champion David Neville.
“Coming into this, I wasn’t really worried about everyone saying I wasn’t the favorite,” Merritt said. “In my mind, I was the favorite.”
Moments before, the women’s 400m went much more to form, with Sanya Richards winning and Mary Wineberg and Dee Dee Trotter capturing the other two spots.
Richards is seeking an individual gold medal to go with the 1,600m relay gold she won in Athens.
In the 1,500m quarter-finals, Bernard Lagat, Lopez Lomong, Alan Webb and Leo Manzano advanced to yesterday’s semis. Kenyan-born Lagat, already qualified for the Olympics in the 5,000m, finished fourth in his heat, clearly saving energy for two more races to come.
In the women’s steeplechase, Anna Willard set a US record, finishing the 3,000m race in nine minutes, 27.59 seconds.
The race of the night, however, was the 400m.
Merritt took to the track with a red-white-and-blue necklace his massage therapist made for him before the race. Wariner was in his trademark sunglasses, even though it was twilight.
Wariner said he wasn’t disappointed in finishing second.
“I just came here to make the team,” he said.
But his body language at the finish line told a different story.
He shuffled his feet in apparent frustration, then looked at the clock, which showed 44.20 — well off his personal best (43.45) and nowhere near Michael Johnson’s world record (43.18) that Wariner has said is within reach for him this year.
“The record is one thing I want to do, but I have to focus on winning the gold medal first,” he said.
He is, indeed, not used to losing, though he has lost two of his last three races with Merritt in the field. Merritt snapped Wariner’s nine-race winning streak earlier this year in Berlin, a result that turned heads simply because nobody has really challenged Wariner since he won the Olympic gold four years ago. Merritt is now 3-12 lifetime in races against Wariner.
But he was hardly in the mood to rub it in. Few will remember who won the Olympic trials. Many will remember who win the Olympics next month.
“I won, but after today, it’s not about the trials anymore,” Merritt said. “It’s about Beijing.”
Starting in lane 6, one lane outside of Wariner, Merritt jumped to a slim lead about halfway through, though that’s nothing surprising; Wariner does his best work in the final 150m.
But Merritt did not let up and as they started down the backstretch, it became clear that Wariner would not make a move to catch Merritt, who finished second to Wariner at world championships last year.
“LaShawn was just the better man today,” Wariner said.
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