Mutola and Devers turn the clock back

World and Olympic champion Maria Mutola cut more than a second off this year’s world best time with a convincing win in the women’...

World and Olympic champion Maria Mutola cut more than a second off this year’s world best time with a convincing win in the women’s 800 metres at the Annual Lausanne Grand Prix athletics meeting on Tuesday. In front of an appreciative and enthusiastic crowd at the Olympic Stadium, the 29-year-old Mozambique runner, who has enjoyed more than a decade at the top of her sport, clocked a winning time of one minute and 56.25 seconds. It was a new record for Lausanne.

This was well inside the previous best in the world this year, set by Slovenia’s Jolanda Ceplak, who recorded 1:57.63 in Lisbon in May, and the outstanding track performance on a night when new world best performances were set in eight events overall.

But if Mutola’s win delighted the noisy crowd, it was nothing more than several other winners achieved as multiple Olympic champion American Marion Jones delivered a popular triumph in the women’s 100 metres and Kenyan Benjamin Limo sprinted to a thrilling win and world best of 7:36.02 in the men’s 3,000 metres.

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“I hit hands with the girl to my left and it felt a little cold, but it was a lot warmer than Oslo,” said Jones, who clocked 11.04 seconds. “We have to run in all conditions and I am now hoping to run faster in Paris.”

Lorraine Fenton of Jamaica also shone in the women’s 400 metres with a fast triumphant run in 50.39 and Gail Devers of the United States maintained her resurgence by winning the women’s 100 metres hurdles with a world best time of 12.40 seconds.

The evening’s serious competition began with Briton Christopher Rawlinson winning the men’s 400 metres hurdles and Maria Concan of Romania defeating Russian rival Yelena Zadorozhnaya in the women’s 1,500 metres before this year’s world best performances began arriving.

The first came from Devers in the women’s 100 metres hurdles, then Fenton won the women’s 400 metres with a new world best time this year.

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Limo powered to victory in the men’s 3,000 metres, outpacing Mohammed Amyn of Morocco at the end, and Anier Garcia of Cuba clocked another world best in the men’s 110 metres hurdles with a time of 13.03 seconds. More world best performances for 2002 followed in the men’s 1,500 metres in which Bernard Lagat of Kenya, who was runner-up in last year’s World Championships, clocked 3.32.24, and in the women’s javelin and high jump in which Cuba’s Osleidys Menendez and Sweden’s Kajsa Bergqvist won respectively.

Bergqvist was thrilled, not only by her victory, but because she also set a world best this year and improved her personal best to 2.04 metres.

(Reuters)

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