American Allyson Felix cruised to her third straight women’s 200 meters gold medal at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin — but compatriot Jeremy Wariner failed to secure his own hat-trick in the men’s 400m.
Felix clocked a time of 20.02 seconds in the Olympic Stadium to beat Olympic champion Veronica Campbell-Brown of Jamaica into second, with Debbie Ferguson-McKenzie of the Bahamas in bronze. “It is very special for me to win here in Berlin,” Felix, 23, told reporters. “I’ve worked really hard to defend my title and I cannot ask for more. “All my titles are different but this one happened in a stadium with a lot of history so this is definitely something special for me.” Wariner, who lost his Olympic title to LaShawn Merritt in Beijing, again had to play second fiddle to his compatriot as Merritt ran 44.06 seconds, the fastest time in the world this year. Wariner took silver in 44.60, a season’s best, with Renny Quow of Trinidad taking the bronze. Merritt said: “Wariner is a great champion but I really wanted it. At 300m I felt good and at 350m I knew I had won the race, I just needed to bring it home. “I am planning on getting better and better every year. Only the sky is the limit.”
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Wariner said: “I feel disappointed because I wanted to defend my title. It was the slowest season for me but the next is going to be different, I guarantee.” Yaroslav Rybakov, who took bronze and silver in the previous two world championships, finally got his hands on gold in the men’s high jump. Rybakov cleared 2.32m with his first attempt to take the title on countback from Kyriakos Ioannou of Cyrpus, with Germany’s Raul Spank and Sylwester Bednarek of Poland sharing bronze. Australia’s Dani Samuels won the women’s discus with a best of 65.44m in the fifth round. Cuba’s Yarelis Barrios snatched silver with 65.31m in the final round with long-time leader Nicoleta Grasu of Romania taking bronze with a throw of 65.20 meters. In other events, defending champions the United States were disqualified after winning their men’s 4x100m relay heat. The U.S. were thrown out because of problems with the final handover from Shawn Crawford to Darvis Patton, although the team are appealing. Meanwhile, newly-crowned 1500m champion Yusuf Saad Kamel of Bahrain moved closer to repeating his father Billy Konchellah’s feat of winning the men’s 800m crown when he qualified for Sunday’s final.
