South African star athlete Caster Semenya will make her 400m worldwide debut this week at the final 2016 Diamond League meeting in Brussels, with a view to expanding her repertoire by potentially adding that event to her specialist 800m race.
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Semenya has spent much of her professional career under the focus of the worldwide athletics community over her hyperandrogenism.
Not only has Tate won a pair of Diamond League titles in Birmingham and Brussels this season, but she has also finished second in the 400 hurdles in Rabat and Monaco, as well as fourth in both Rome and Lausanne and fifth in Doha.
Semenya looked like she was running an 800m race, so slow was her pace as she appeared to be jogging, while the rest of the field was going all out.
Still uncomfortable with the topic, Semenya admitted to STAR Sports that coming back from the mental and physical strains of the past few years has been tough, but she is looking to move ahead and add to her successes.
Olympic heptathlon champion Nafi Thiam delighted her home crowd by winning the women s high jump on countback from three others who also managed 1.93m, while Colombia s imperious Olympic gold medallist Caterine Ibarguen won the triple jump (14.66m). The Jamaican fought hard, along with American Courtney Okolo, but as they got closer to the line, it was Semenya who pushed in front and then dipped on the line to just edge out her two main rivals.
Past year this time, South African 800m headliner Caster Semenya was looking to shake off a torrid World Championships campaign after an eighth-place finish in the semi-final in Beijing. “This is suicide! The 800m is much better, the 400m I do for speed”.
Jamaica s double Olympic sprint champion Elaine Thompson brought the curtain down on a spectacular season with her 12th straight 100m victory at Brussels Diamond League meeting on Friday.
Manyonga followed up Semenya’s superb performance with a career-best display himself.
Morris has cleared 4.95m indoors, where fellow United States vaulter Jenn Suhr, the London 2012 champion, set a world record of 5.03m in January this year.
The results were similar, as Kipruto finished in 8:03.74 and Jager was right behind in 8:04.01.
The duo were separated by Australia’s Fabrice Lapierre, who took the Diamond Race title by ending second in 8.17m.
And the biggest cheer of the night at the King Baudouin was for something that, in fact was eight years old. He was the world junior champion in 2010, and has a great chance of emulating that achievement at senior level in London next August.
Diamond Race winners are determined by a points system from a series of 14 meetings held over the year.
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Ayana sliced almost 14 seconds off the previous world 10,000m best – set by Wang Junxia in 1993 during the era of notorious Chinese coach Ma Junren – when she won Olympic gold in 29min 17.45sec at last month’s Rio Games.
