Tyson Gay was disappointed with his performance after winning the 200m in a meeting record 19.72 seconds at the Monaco Diamond League event on Thursday.
The 27-year-old was ahead off the bend and poised for a comfortable victory until Jamaican Yohan Blake, running in lane eight, came blazing down the home straight and almost closed the gap on the tiring American.
“I ran too wide in the corner, I slipped a bit. I wanted to run faster but it’s okay,” Gay, the 2007 world champion, told reporters.
Blake, training partner of world record holder Usain Bolt, clocked 19.78 to improve his personal best by almost a second.
On a hot and humid evening there was also frustration for 110m hurdler David Oliver, who had targeted Dayron Robles’ world record of 12.87 but hit two barriers on his way to the line in 13.01.
“My reaction wasn’t really good. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t completely set,” said Oliver, who ran 12.89 in Paris last week.
“That’s okay, I have got the stadium record and points in the Diamond League. I want to win the Diamond League this year,” he said.
Kenyan Silas Kiplagat pipped Moroccan Amine Laalou on the line in the men’s 1,500m to post a year’s best time of 3:29.27 and lower his personal best by five seconds.
Jamaican Jermaine Gonzales won the 400m in a world leading 44.40, beating the mark of 44.49 set by Jeremy Wariner last week in Paris,
Triple world long jump champion Dwight Phillips posted 8.46m on his first attempt to improve the year’s best he set in Rome last month.
Russian Ivan Ukhov confirmed he would be a favorite for the high jump title at next week’s European championships in Barcelona by clearing 2.34m at his first attempt.
Cuban world champion Yargelis Savigne recorded the longest triple jump of the season with 15.09m.
A strong piece of front-running gave American Alysia Johnson victory in the 800m in a world leading 1:57.34. There was also a year’s best time for Ethiopian Sentayehu Ejigu in the 3,000m of 8:28.41.
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