A flat-looking Usain Bolt raced his worst 100m in three years in Ostrava on Friday, still managing to claim victory after he recovered sufficiently from a dreadful start and a limp drive phase.
The Jamaican double Olympic sprint champion clocked 10.04 seconds, some distance off the 9.7 second time he was seeking to build on his season-opening 9.82 seconds earlier this month.
A false start played its part, throwing a distinctly average field into automatic play-safe mode.
Into a 0.8m/s headwind, Bolt grimaced his way from the 50m mark and did enough to beat home veteran Kim Collins of St Kitts and St Nevis (10.19 seconds) with American Darivs Patton third (10.22 seconds).
Elsewhere on the track, defending Olympic champion Pamela Jelimo of Kenya fired a broadside at South African pretender Caster Semenya with a convincing victory in the women’s 800m.
Jelimo, also the newly crowned world indoor champion, but who missed almost three years of competition after her Beijing Games triumph through injury, dominated the race to win in 1 minute, 58.49 seconds, with Semenya in second in 2 minutes, 80 seconds.
Semenya, with doubts over her real gender long buried in her past, left her push for the line too late.
The South African settled in at the back of the pack and only kicked with 150m to go.
By that stage, Jelimo had kicked and there was too much for Semenya, now coached by Mozambique running legend Maria Mutola, to make up.
There was more South African disappointment when double amputee Oscar Pistorius raced a horrendous 400m in his ongoing bid to nail qualification for the able-bodied Olympics.
The 25-year-old South African, who runs with carbon-fiber artificial “blades,” came in a sorry eighth and last in 47.66 seconds, 2.54 seconds off US winner LaShawn Merritt and far away from the 45.70 seconds he needs to run to ensure his participation at the London Games.
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
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
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