On a day made for doubles, Tirunesh Dibaba clinched an unprecedented long-distance sweep and sprinter Lauryn Williams added a second gold by helping the United States win the 400m relay on Saturday at the World Athletics Championships.
The 19-year-old Dibaba successfully defended her title in the 5 000m race, beating three compatriots in a championship-record time of 14 minutes and 38,59 seconds — the second Ethiopian rout in a week. On the competition’s opening day, Dibaba led a sweep in the 10 000m.
Defying stomach pains, Morocco’s Jaouad Gharib defended his marathon title with a burst of speed to leave the opposition trailing with about 12km to go.
After winning the 100m on Monday, Williams ran a blazing anchor leg to win her second gold medal of this year’s competition.
With her hair tied up in Mickey Mouse ears, Williams got the baton first and never let Olympic champions Jamaica get close over the final stretch, finishing in a season’s leading 41,78 seconds.
Belarus took bronze.
Allyson Felix, the 200m champion, also could have won her second gold, but the coaches decided to stay with the team that ran Friday’s heats.
Victory pushed the US to 12 golds, just one shy of their world championship record. They have 23 overall.
Russia were second with five golds and 15 overall, and the Ethiopian sweep pushed the African nation into third with three golds and eight overall.
With 300m to go, Dibaba and her teammates burst away from the pack. Meseret Defar kept up with Dibaba until the final 50m, but could not withstand Dibaba’s final acceleration.
Dibaba’s older sister, Ejegayehu Dibaba, took bronze. The Ethiopians also swept the 10 000m.
In the 400m hurdles, Yulia Pechonkina kept her unbeaten outdoor record this year going, dipping under 53 seconds with a season-leading 52,90 seconds to hold off Americans Lashinda Demus and Sandra Glover.
Nadezhda Ostapchuk of Belarus won the shot put with a throw of 20,51m, beating Olga Ryabinkina of Russia and Valerie Vili of New Zealand.
Two years after winning with a final burst of speed entering the stadium in Paris, Gharib didn’t wait this long on Saturday.
”With some 10km to go, I felt good and said, ‘Here I go,”’ Gharib said.
Gharib joined Abel Anton of Spain as the only men to win back-to-back world marathon titles. Anton accomplished the feat in Athens in 1997 and Seville in 1999.
In the absence of middle-distance great Hicham El Guerrouj, it was Morocco’s first gold at the championships. Christopher Isegwe of Tanzania took silver and Tsuyoshi Ogata of Japan was third.
In the 400m hurdles, Demus went out too fast in the outside lane and offered a perfect target for Pechonkina. The Russian caught her in the final bend and her kick for home was unstoppable. The world-record-holder clocked the second-fastest time of her career.
”I managed to figure out the peak of my form at the right time,” said Pechonkina, who has won silver and bronze at previous worlds.
Against Pechonkina, Demus tried a risky tactic but still got home with silver.
”Obviously, she was going to get it. It was written before we even knew it,” she said.
Dibaba didn’t even need to win the 5 000m to have a superlative season, which started with an indoor world record over the distance in Boston in February. She then added the cross-country long and short-distance world titles before winning the 10 000m world title last weekend. — Sapa-AP