With the personal best of 19.94 he ran in the 200 metres earlier this year, he joined Michael Johnson, Merritt and Isaac Makwala as the only athletes to have gone under 20 seconds in the 200 and 44 seconds in the 400.
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Jepkemoi won a three-way sprint to the line to take the gold medal in the 3,000-meter steeplechase ahead of Habiba Ghibri of Tunesia and Gesa Krause of Germany.
Van Niekerk made his worldwide debut at the 2010 world junior championship in Athletics.
In that event, Julius Yego produced the longest throw anywhere in the world for 14 years, falling just eight centimetres short of Jan Zelezny’s championship record with 92.72m.
Luguelin Santos of the Dominican Republic set a national record of 44.11 in finishing fourth with Machel Cedenio of Trinidad and Tobago 45.06 for seventh. However, there was no doubt about this 90-metre throw in the third after the 26-year-old stepped up from a foul and then an 82-mark in the opening two rounds.
Behind Yego, Egypt’s Ihab Abdelrahman El Sayed also made a breakthrough as he took silver with 88.99, with bronze going to 2007 world champion Tero Pitkamaki with 87.64.
For both men, it was a dramatic breakthrough in global level competition.
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Next up was Gatlin, who leads the world rankings this year with 19.57 and is unbeaten at the distance since 2013. 01 second in Sunday’s 100 final, he will be seeking his record 10th world title overall on Thursday at the Bird’s Nest. “There were a lot of fireworks in the final”, Rabah said afterwards. After a tight last lap, all three finished within.
