World Athletics Final Report
September 24th 2007 12:12
Take Asafa Powell for example, expected to win but with a super fast time of 9.83 ran into a -0.3 headwind (making it the second fastest ever into a headwind) he provided the watching world with a performance to wax lyrical over during those long winter months before next year.
By contrast the 19.89 (wind 1.3m/s) ran by Norwegian (formerly Gambian) Saidy Ndure Jaysuma in the 200m was greeted with as much joy at a new national record and the 4th fastest time ever by a European as surprise by the Stuttgart crowd.
Jaysuma accelerated almost exponentially out of the blocks to head pre race favourite Wallace Spearmon one lane outside him coming into the straight away
Another performance that will certainly turn heads is that produced by 110m hurdler Dayron Robles who registered a what can only be described as mind blowing performance of 12.92, just 4 hundredths off of the world record set by Liu Xiang.
While Liu Xiang was not in attendance here, silver medallist and perennial second placer to Xiang, Terrance Trammell was and he was made to look distinctly average next to the young Cuban.
An all together more expected performance came from Sanya Richards who since Osaka has been almost a second ahead of the rest of the world.
And so it proved here with a time of 49.27, way ahead of second placed Novlene Williams (50.12).
In the women’s 800m the woman of the moment, Kenyan Janeth Jepkosgei once again ran bravely from the gun to record 1:57.87 and Meseret Defer was just as impressive in winning the 3000m in 8:27.24.
In the men’s 400m hurdles Pole Marek Plawgo sprung a surprise on Kerron Clement and James Carter by winning by the narrowest of margins.
His 48.35 time was matched by Clement and Carter was only one hundredth behind.
The men’s triple jump provided one of the best finishes all weekend with the lead changing several times in the final round.
Wilson Aarik thought he’d done enough with a 17.34m effort only to be eclipsed one jump later by Davis Walter who flew out to 17.35m to secure the narrowest of victories.
After failing 3 times at 4.92m Yelena Isinbaeva entered into a jump off with Monika Pyrek of Poland.
Both ladies had cleared 4.82m at the first attempt and gone no higher so the bar was raised to 4.87m.
Isinbaeva cleared it to set a new championship record; Pyrek didn’t and hurt herself in the process.
With Pyrek and Svetlana Feofanova gaining ground on Isinbaeva almost every week the Russian world record holder will be looking over her shoulder worryingly in the final few weeks of the year.
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