“It gives me a lot of motivation for next season”.
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Gemili, 22, clocked 19.97 seconds to finish second behind Jamaican Julian Forte, who was given the same time – also a lifetime best.
The Olympic silver medallist sailed over 8.20m with three of his first four attempts before launching a massive 8.48m leap in the fifth round to secure a convincing win.
On a balmy night when several world record attempts went awry, the outstanding performance came from pole vaulter Sandi Morris.
“Now I can go finally back home”, Thompson said.
Yet she had to settle for victory in a meeting record of 14 minutes 18.89 seconds, more than seven seconds outside the world record. If I have to summarise it in one word: “Wonderful!”
Jamaican quarter-miler Stephenie-Ann McPherson said she was thrilled to have won the women’s 400m Diamond Trophy after her third placed finish at the Brussels Memorial van Damme Diamond League in Belgium today.
“I had a decent start in my race but when it came to accelerating at the midway stage, my hamstrings caused me some trouble”, Schippers said.
She entered the straight in the middle of the pack before using her power to surge through down the stretch to win in a personal best time of 50.40 seconds.
But it was enough to confirm the 21-year-old’s Diamond Race win on a night when Olympic silver medallist Evan Jager of the U.S. finished second in a season’s best of 8:04.01.
There was a further fillip for the Brussels audience with the belated award of gold medals to the Belgian women’s 4×100 meters relay team from the 2008 Olympics.
In the 400, South Africa’s Caster Semenya proved her versatility.
South Africa’s Caster Semenya won her first worldwide 400m race at the Diamond League meeting in Brussels.
Thompson led from the blocks and was never challenged as she set a Brussels meeting record of 10.72 seconds, just one-hundredth of a second outside her winning time in Rio.
Exhausted, Semenya crumpled to the ground, saying the intensity of the 400 was incomparable to the more tactical 800.
The American’s landmark achievement – which was a new Area record, a meeting record and a Diamond League record – now takes its place behind the top five vaults by the double Olympic champion who retired on the day of the Rio 2016 pole vault final, from which she was excluded following the IAAF ban on Russian track and field athletes following allegations of state-supported doping.
Well behind, Shannon Rowbury of the United States set a continental record of 14:38.92.
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There was also expected to be a tilt at a world record in the men’s 3000m steeplechase, but in-form Kenyan Conseslus Kipruto fell well short of the 7:53.63 mark set in 2004 in Brussels by Kenyan-born Qatari Saif Saaeed Shaheen. The Belgian 2008 women’s Olympic 4×100 relay team was officially handed its gold medals on Friday ¿ eight years after crossing the line at the Beijing Games in second place behind Russian Federation.
