Britain’s 200m world champion Dina Asher-Smith equaled her personal best (PB) over 60m, as she clocked 7.08 seconds in winning the women’s final at Karlsruhe’s indoor meet on Friday in her first race for well over a year.
“I was really, really happy,” Asher-Smith told the Daily Telegraph after having just missed the British record.
“It’s been a strange year for us all and been quite a long time since I’ve competed on the international stage, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect — but to equal my PB is really good,” Asher-Smith said.
Photo: AP
Less than six months before the Tokyo Olympics get underway, Asher-Smith dominated the field, with the meet held behind closed doors due to COVID-19.
Compatriot Asha Philip, the 2017 European indoor champion, was fifth in a time of 7.22 seconds, short of her British record time of 7.06 seconds.
Asher-Smith was the fastest semi-finalist, clocking 7.11 seconds, in her first indoor race for three years and her first international race for 15 months.
“We missed a whole year of high-level competition,” said Asher-Smith, who wants to focus on the indoor season to ensure that she is “race sharp going into the Olympic outdoor season.”
“While the world has been really weird, we can’t forget that we have the biggest prize in track and field up for grabs this year,” Asher-Smith added.
The British sprinter is set to race in Duesseldorf today and Lievin on Feb. 9.
The 25-year-old could also run at the European Indoor Championships in Turon, Poland, on March 5 to 7, for which she has already qualified.
Britain’s former European bronze medalist Elliot Giles claimed victory in the men’s 800m, when he ran 1:45.50 ahead of France’s 2017 world champion Pierre-Ambroise Bosse, who finished third.
Kenya’s world steeplechase champion Beatrice Chepkoech clocked 8:41.98 in winning the women’s 3,000m final.
Cuba’s world indoor champion Juan Miguel Echevarria won the men’s long jump with a season’s leading distance of 8.18m. There was a surprise in the women’s shot-put as Portugal’s Auriol Dongmo threw a PB of 19.65m.
It added nearly half a meter to the previous world leading distance of Germany’s Christina Schwanitz, who finished in fifth place.
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