Meanwhile, Botswana’s Isaac Makwala reached the World Championship 200 metres final against all the odds on Wednesday, negotiating a solo heat before coming through his semi-final via the hard inside lane after gaining a reprieve from the IAAF.
Bahamanian Miller-Uibo, who famously dived over the line to pip Felix to Olympic gold a year ago, was clear with 20 metres left but as she exhausted and tied up she tripped on her own foot, stumbling nearly to a standstill as her rivals stormed past her. “I’m definitely going out there with those kind of aspirations and I’ll just see what happens on the day”.
Clement, world champion in Osaka 2007 and Berlin 2009, settled for third today in 48.52. “But then they told me, ‘You are first.’ That is insane”.
“I can not lie, I am disappointed to lose one gold tonight, but the championships is not over yet, so we keep going”, the 31-year-old Felix said, according to The New York Times. That is what it is about. I’m glad I came through tonight and now I can get ready for the final. “At the 200m mark it looked like it was shaping up to be a great race”. Makwala, the top-ranked 200m runner this year, qualified safely after being medically cleared to re-run following a stomach virus.
With only two automatically through from the three semifinals, Van Niekerk’s time of 20.28 was good enough for the last spot in Thursday’s final.
South African Wayde van Niekerk, bidding for a double after his 400 metres gold, sneaked into the final as second of the two fastest losers after edging third place in his heat from Christophe Lemaitre by two hundredths of a second. Although he was visibly tired after taking 400m gold on Tuesday, he assured he will be ready for Thursday’s final. Also the slowest winning time in worlds history.
In taking the bronze, Felix won her 14th world championships medal, tied for Usain Bolt and Merlene Ottey for the most by any athlete. Farah has won all five Olympic and world 5000m titles since 2011. Gong, the 2012 Olympic silver medalist, took fourth in Rio behind Carter, who became the first U.S. Olympic women’s shot put champ.
Gong also overcame awful conditions to earn the women’s shot put gong and take the first major victory of her career.
Jackson, the 2015 World Championships and 2016 Olympic bronze medallist, could only manage fifth place this time around.
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