RIO DE JANEIRO – Elaine Thompson inherited the mantle of Olympic 100 meters champion from fellow Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce Saturday but Mo Farah simply refused to relinquish his 10,000m crown as the Briton recovered from a fall to retain his title.
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Fraser-Pryce is seeking to become the first woman to win three straight gold medals in the 100m at the Olympic Games.
He became the first person to win three straight Olympic 100-meter titles, finishing in 9.81 seconds at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics on Sunday.
Fraser-Pryce and Marie-Josee Ta Lou of the Ivory Coast clocked the same time to the hundredths of a second – 10.86 – but Fraser-Pryce was awarded bronze after a review of images from finish-line cameras that can capture thousands of frames per second.
Elaine Thompson stunned the world with a devastating run of 10.71 seconds to wrestle gold away from her Jamaican colleague and training partner Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.
The track and field sprinter has a net worth estimated at $4 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.
“Considering how the season went and everything I was going through I was just excited to be there. I took his temperature: he had a fever of over 40 degrees Celcius (104 Fahrenheit)”, she wrote on her Facebook page, adding that she thought he was bitten by a spider or a mosquito.
“She yelled, ‘this is the USA women’s eight!’ And we rallied”, said Kerry Simmonds, who rowed in seat No. 2.
Nafissatou Thiam of Belgium beat defending champion Jessica Ennis-Hill of Britain to win an Olympic heptathlon competition that went down to a matter of seconds in the last event.
Thompson was quick to praise Fraser-Pryce, pointing out that the year had been a hard one for her.
Bowie competes for the United States.
Williams’ fifth medal will match Kathleen McKane, who won five (one gold) in the 1920s.
“When I fell down I thought, ‘Well, my dream is over, ‘ but I chose to dig deep because I promised my daughter I’d get her a medal”, Farah said of stepdaughter Rihanna.
“I guess it wasn’t the Olympic ending I was really hoping for in terms of trying to make the final”, said Henry. “I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am to be able to stand on the podium after having a year like this”.
For the third Olympics in a row, the fastest race in the Olympics belongs to Jamaica.
The result came a year after Thompson took second in the 200m at the world championships in Beijing, as well as winning gold in the 4x100m on a team led by Fraser-Pryce and veteran Veronica Campbell-Brown, who Thompson edged in the 200m at the country’s national championships in June.
The Jamaican sprinter is easy to spot on the track by her green and yellow dyed hair- not to mention her incredible speed. Brianne Theisen-Eaton of Canada took bronze with 6,653 points.
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The gold and bronze performances were Jamaica’s first medals of Rio, a count that is expected to rise as the focus shifts from swimming to athletics over the coming week.
