Usain Bolt ran the fastest 20m of the season on Saturday with a time of 19.73 seconds at the Areva Diamond League meet in Paris.
Bolt shaved 0.01 seconds off the previous best time of the year, set by US sprinter Tyson Gay at the US trials last month.
Fellow Jamaican Warren Weir was second in 19.92, ahead of former European champion Christophe Lemaitre in 20.07.
Photo: Reuters
Bolt will next compete in the 100m and 4x100m relay in London on July 26 and July 27 in a one-year anniversary event for last year’s Olympics.
That will be his final major meeting before the worlds, which start on Aug. 10.
In other events at Areva, the ninth leg in the Diamond League circuit, Olympic champion Kirani James of Grenada clocked a world-leading 43.96 in the men’s 400m, beating Americans LaShawn Merritt (44.09) and Tony McQuay (44.84).
“Today in comparison with previous races, I had a little bit better first 200,” James said. “You need to always pay attention to runners like LaShawn. If he would be too far ahead, it would be tough to beat him.”
James caught Merritt in the backstretch, before running away on the final straight.
“I could have done better,” Merritt said. “Some parts of my race were slower than they should be, but I will correct it. To win in Moscow, I need to use my speed. That is the key.”
Merritt won gold at the 2008 Olympics and the world title in 2009, before a 21-month suspension for failing a doping test.
Three-time Olympic champion Tirunesh Dibaba of Ethiopia ran 14:23.68 in the women’s 5,000m, also a world-leading time this season.
In the women’s 100m, Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce held off a late charge from Blessing Okagbare of Nigeria to win by one hundredth of a second in 10.92. US champion English Gardner finished a distant fifth in 11.13.
World record-holder Aries Merritt of the US led from start to finish to win the men’s 110m hurdles in 13.09. Frenchman Pascal Martinot-Lagarde came second in 13.12, edging US hurdler David Oliver (13.13).
Olympic champion Anna Chicherova of Russia leaped 2.01m at her first attempt to take the women’s high jump, 3cm higher than US champion Brigetta Barrett in second and former world champion Blanka Vlasic of Croatia in third.
The next leg Diamond League meet is in Monaco on July 19.
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