Compatriot Asafa Powell went slightly faster than Bolt, as did young American Trayvon Bromell and Frenchman Jimmy Vicaut. The 33-year-old American took bronze behind Bolt at the 2012 Olympics and silver at the 2013 world championships in Moscow.
Advertisement
De Grasse, a 20-year-old from Markham, Ont., is competing in his first world championships.
Bolt’s reaction time of.
After the action in the preliminaries, Gatlin became the 100-meter favorite, at 4-5, in several sports books in Britain, the country where the Bolt-Gatlin showdown is being labeled as “Good vs. Evil” – a race between the sport’s smiling face and a twice-convicted doper. “It’s not about me, it’s about track and field, it’s about the 100m, to come out here and make one of the most exciting races with Usain Bolt – it’s an honour”.
In recent weeks the worldwide Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has defended itself over charges laid in articles by The Sunday Times, in collaboration with German TV company ARD, that it has neglected to follow up numerous athletes with “suspicious” blood levels and sought to block publication of a potentially embarrassing survey of athletes’ attitudes to doping conducted at the 2011 World Championships in Daegu. Even so, he still hopes it will have planted enough doubts in Usain Bolt’s mind to tap away at his impenetrable confidence before Sunday’s semi-finals and finals. Bolt scratched from a few meets this July after suffering a blocked sacroiliac joint injury.
Usain Bolt gave the gift of life to athletics as he produced surely his greatest win to raise the sport from its death bed, writes Alex Spink in Beijing.
Gatlin, 33, oozed the same confidence and easy form he has shown throughout the year, playing down his time, and once again he seems unaffected by the furore around his appearance here after those two drugs bans. Then there’s Gatlin, who served a four-year doping ban.
After a personal best in the 100 hurdles, Theisen-Eaton only scaled 1.80 meters in the high jump, nine centimeters off her best, to slip in the standings. Laura Ikauniece-Admidiņa finished third for bronze.
Barring a major upset, the gold medal will be contested by Storl and Kovacs, the only two men registering throws of beyond 22 metres this year with three Diamond League wins apiece.
Competitors in the 20-kilometer walk have left the stadium at the start of Day 2 at the world championships.
Gatlin, who won the 100 at the 2004 Olympics before serving a four-year suspension for doping, is unbeaten in 2015 and had the season-leading time of 9.74 heading into the championships. Americans Erik Sowinski and Clayton Murphy, who replaced U.S. 800-meter champion Nick Symmonds, failed to advance to the final. Or that he sauntered into the semi-finals in 9.83sec, despite easing down and looking around after 60m.
Meanwhile, Serena Williams also reached the finals of a tournament she won for the first time previous year, beating 14th-seeded Elina Svitolina in straight sets.
Advertisement
Jamaican sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce gets her title defense started today in the opening heats. The fastest time of the round were recorded by Saudi Arabia’s Yousef Ahmed Masrahi and Jamaica’s Rusheen McDonald in 43.93.
