Skip to main content

Bolt wins triple gold in World Athletics

Sunday, August 23, 2009 BERLIN: Usain Bolt bagged his third gold medal of the World Athletics Championships here on Saturday when Jamaica stormed to the men's 4x100m relay title.Bolt has this week also shattered his own world records in winning the 100m (9.58sec) and 200m (19.19sec) to replicate his Beijing Olympics medal haul.The Jamaican, who turned 23 on Friday, played down any suggestion that he was the "saviour" of athletics.Steve Mullings, a 200m specialist, was the anchor man, handing on to Michael Frater, with former world record holder and current 100m bronze medallist Asafa Powell the sprinter entrusted with the final leg.Bolt, however, failed to completely demonstrate his explosive power around the bend despite the roars of a packed Olympic Stadium, and his handover to Powell almost went awry when he just avoided running into his teammate.The Jamaican foursome nevertheless set a championship record time of 37.31sec ahead of Trinidad and Tobago (37.62) with Britain claiming bronze (38.02).In more glory for the Caribbean sprinters, Jamaica also won the women's 4x100m relay title after the US team had crashed out in their heat. The result meant that the only sprint title the US have won here is the women's 200m by Allyson Felix.The Jamaican quartet, including individual 100m champion Shelly-Ann Fraser, timed 42.06 seconds to take gold ahead of Bahamas (42.29sec) while Germany took bronze (42.87sec).Away from the world of sprinting, Kenya enjoyed an excellent day's work with long distance arch-rivals Ethiopia emerging as the main losers.Kenyan Abel Kirui won the men's marathon with compatriot Emmanuel Mutai claiming silver ahead of Ethiopia's Olympic bronze medallist Tsegay Kebede.And in the absence of injured Ethiopian distance-running starlet Tirunesh Dibaba, Kenya's Vivian Cheruiyot trumped defending champion Meseret Defar, also of Ethiopia, in a sprint to the line in the women's 5000m.As Defar eased off in the knowledge that she had been defeated, Cheruiyot's compatriot Sylvia Kibet stole in for silver.American Dwight Phillips, who was the 2004 Olympic champion and world champion in 2003 and 2005, regained his long jump title with a best of 8.54m after seeing defending champion and Olympic titleholder Irving Saladino fail to make it through to the final three jumps.South African Godfrey Mokoena (8.47m) replicated his Beijing Games form with a silver and Australia's Mitchell Watt took bronze (8.37m).Australian Steve Hooker, the Olympic champion, overcame a groin injury to win the men's pole vault, making just one clearance at 5.90m for victory over French duo Romain Mesnil (5.85m) and Renaud Lavillenie (5.80m).Poland's Anita Wlodarczyk set a new world record of 77.96m in winning the women's hammer throw, Germany's Betty Heidler claiming silver with a national record of 77.12m and Czech thrower Martina Hrasnova taking bronze with 74.79m.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

India's swine flu death rate is increasing

Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...

Suicide bombings kill 18 in Iraq

Thursday, August 13, 2009 MOSUL: At least 18 people, most of them members of the ancient Yazidi religious sect, were killed when two suicide bombers blew themselves up on Thursday in a packed cafe in northern Iraq, a local government official said.At least 31 people were also wounded after the bombers detonated suicide belts packed with explosives in the cafe in Kalaa town, in the district of Sanjar, local district chief Dakheel Qassem Hasoon, told a foreign news agency."Two suicide bombers entered the Cafe Barbaroz at 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) and blew themselves up, killing 18 civilians and wounding 31. Most of the victims were Yazidis," Hasoon said.Kalaa, northwest of the insurgent stronghold of Mosul in northern Nineveh province is predominantly populated by the minority Yazidi religious sect, as well as Arabs and Kurds.The attack is the deadliest since Monday, when 51 people were killed across Iraq, including 28 members of the tiny Shabak sect cut down when two truck bombs det...

US drones to target Taliban in Afghan war

Friday, July 31, 2009 WASHINGTON: The US military plans to use more drone aircraft to target Taliban militants in Afghanistan while focusing less on hunting down Al-Qaeda figures, report said on Thursday.Although defeating the Al-Qaeda terror network remains an overriding goal for Washington, officials now believe the best way to pursue that objective is to ensure stability in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan instead of Al-Qaeda manhunts, the paper said, citing US government and Defense Department officials.It was more important to prevent a slide towards violence and anarchy that could be exploited by Al-Qaeda, which used Afghanistan to stage its attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the officials said."We might still be too focused on Bin Laden," an official said. "We should probably reassess our priorities."The shift in priorities for the drone fleet comes despite President Barack Obama's declaration that defeating and dismantling Al-Qaeda ...