Olympic women’s 400m champion Sanya Richards-Ross won her first race since the London Games and Yuliya Zaripov clocked the year’s fastest time in the women’s 3,000m steeplechase at Friday’s Diamond League meeting.
The Dominican Republic’s Felix Sanchez was beaten in the 400m hurdles, while Olympic 1,500m champion Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria, running in the 800m, was upstaged by 18-year-old Ethiopian Mohammed Aman.
They were among 11 Olympic champions running at the Stockholm Olympic stadium, which staged the Games in 1912, having been opened one month earlier.
Photo: AFP
American Richards-Ross was trailing off the final curve before powering down the final straight to take victory from Botswana’s Amantle Montsho in 49.89 seconds, while Britain’s Olympic silver medalist Christine Ohuruogo was third.
Russia’s Zaripova, who set the previous world leading time in winning Olympic gold, bettered that performance by running 9 minutes, 05.02 seconds, beating Tunisia’s Habiba Ghribi into second place as she did in London. Sanchez, whose tearful reaction to winning Olympic gold was one of the most emotional moments of the Games, lost to American Michael Tinsley, the man he beat into second place in London.
Olympic champion Christian Taylor of the US won the men’s triple jump, while Olympic shot put champion Tomasz Majewski of Poland had to settle for second place behind American Reese Hoffa’s first throw of 21.24m.
The women’s discus and shot put produced a repeat of the one-two combinations in London.
Croatia’s Sandra Perkovic won the discus with her final throw of 68.77m ahead of Russia’s Darya Pishchalnikova, who had to be content with second place.
New Zealand’s Valerie Adams again emerged victorious in the shot with a throw of 20.26m ahead of Russia’s Evgeniia Kolodko.
Russia’s Anna Chicherova was another Olympic champion to win as she triumphed in the high jump with a 2m leap.
However, Olympic champion Jennifer Suhr of the US had an unhappy evening in the pole vault, entering the fray at 4.55m and failing to clear that height as London Games silver medalist Yarisley Silva of Cuba won with 4.70m.
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
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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