World champion Caster Semenya finished a surprising ninth in the 800m and former Olympic champion Justin Gatlin placed second in the 100m with his best time since returning from a four-year doping ban on Tuesday at the Palio della Quercia meet.
Gatlin clocked 10.09 seconds, three hundredths behind Jamaican winner Johan Blake at the competition in northern Italy.
Double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius had a tough night, placing third in the 400 B race in 47.14 seconds, far off the 45.95 seconds he needs to qualify for next year’s world championships.
In her fifth race following an 11-month gender dispute, Semenya clocked a dismal two minutes, 7.16 seconds.
Elisa Cusma Piccione of Italy, who openly questioned Semenya’s gender at last year’s worlds in Berlin, won in two minutes, 0.37 seconds.
It’s Semenya’s second consecutive loss after she placed third at the Diamond League meet in Brussels on Friday.
Despite the loss in Brussels, Semenya still clocked one minute, 59.66 seconds — the fastest time of her comeback. This time she was nowhere close to victory.
Semenya stood third to last after the first lap and never made a move to the front, giving the impression she was just out for a casual jog.
“Nothing happened. I ran the race, I ran slow. Nothing happened. It’s part of the game,” Semenya said. “Sometimes you need to go according to your body.”
Afterward, Semenya walked over to Cusma Piccione and congratulated the Italian.
“It was a nice gesture,” Cusma Piccione said. “I know she hasn’t trained much and it’s not easy to keep up your form. Maybe she’s tired.”
Cusma Piccione called Semenya “a man” when she lost to her at worlds.
“Maybe I used words that were a bit crude, but I wasn’t the only one to use those words if you look at what’s being said now,” the Italian said. “Maybe it was a bit excessive to have said that right away because you can never judge these things, but if she didn’t compete for nearly a year, maybe there was something to that.”
Gatlin maintained his focus despite two false starts, which disqualified two runners — Ryan Bailey of the US and Fabio Cerutti of Italy.
“It was a good practice for me and I bettered my time as well,” Gatlin said. “I tweaked my quad just a little bit coming into home and had to slow a little bit but all in all it was a good race, going against good competitors.”
Gatlin added that he hopes to go under 10 seconds at his next meet in Padua tomorrow.
“Every time I run I get faster, I get more comfortable with myself, I get more comfortable with my race, so I still think I pose some kind of a threat in the long [run],” Gatlin said.
Pistorius attributed his disappointing performance to fatigue, having flown in from South Africa earlier on Tuesday after attending his grandfather’s 93rd birthday. He missed out on qualifying for South Africa’s Commonwealth Games team by two hundredths when he set a personal-best of 46.02 in July.
“That’s frustrating but it just means I’m going to have to work harder in the future and find ways of training smarter and resting more,” he said.
Pistorius went through a long battle with the IAAF to race against able-bodied athletes amid claims that his prosthetic limbs gave him an unfair advantage.
That battle gives Pistorius a different perspective on Semenya’s case.
“I can understand her frustration,” Pistorius said of his fellow South African. “She’s younger than I was when I went through what I went through. I think she’s a stronger person for going through it and there’s lots of good things to come from her in the future.”
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