Petty goes oh so close
So close, yet so far. Angie Petty has missed a place in the athletics world championships 800 metres semifinals by an agonising threehundreths of a second.
The 25-year-old Canterbury athlete finished fourth in the third heat, pipping Jamaica’s Natoya Goule on the line by 0.01s to come home in 2min 01.76sec. That was one spot out of the automatic qualifying positions and left her sweating on squeezing through as one of the six fastest losers.
But it was not to be as Petty frustratingly missed a semifinal spot by just one position, and 0.03s, shaded by South Africa’s Gena Lofstrand (2:01.73) for the last of the fastest loser positions.
Petty’s heat was won by controversial South African athlete Caster Semenya who cruised home in 2:01.33. The New Zealander’s time was well off her season’s best of 2:00.44s as she just couldn’t match the finishing kick of the top trio.
Petty then had to sweat out the remaining three heats to see if her time would hold up, and was looking good until the final race emerged as the fastest of the six, with seven of the eight starters making it through to the semifinals.
‘‘I should have been running way better than that 2:01,’’ said the six time national champ and World University Games gold medallist. ‘‘But it was the way it was run. I didn’t position myself well.
‘‘I didn’t seem to have it in that last 100m. It just felt a weird race but I still gave it everything, but just didn’t feel as sharp as I was hoping.’’
Hamilton-based Palmerston North athlete Ben LangtonBurnell, competing at his first world championships, was well off the pace in qualifying for the men’s javelin.
The 24-year-old managed a best throw of 76.46 metres in the second group, which left him well short of the 83m required to progress to the final. He had a best of 82.44m achieved in Hamilton in June to qualify for the championships.
The Kiwi opened with that 76.46m throw, then followed it with 73.47m and, finally, 74.46m to finish
12th in the group and 24th overall.
‘‘I absolutely loved it – fantastic crowd, fantastic venue, it was a lot of fun and I can’t wait for future championships,’’ he said afterwards.
’’I didn’t quite connect the 76m throw how I was wanting to, but it was good to experience that in my first championships.
‘‘The technical model didn’t quite hold and I have things to work on. My left leg wasn’t holding so I was collapsing my block and it was hard to put power into the javelin.’’
Langton Burnell will head to the World University Games in two weeks and will then set himself for next year’s Commonwealth Games.
German Johannes Venter led the 13 javelin qualifiers with a mammoth 91.20m, with five athletes throwing better than 85m.
Meanwhile, Waikato’s Camille Buscomb didn’t fire a shot in the first heat of the 5000m, taking the lead at the end of the first kilometre but was spat out the back of the field when the pace really went on.
Buscomb finished 16th, and last, in the heat won by Kenya’s Hellen Obiri, with a disappointing time of 15min 40.41s.
Obiri was the first of seven athletes in the heat to come home under the 15-minute mark with a winning time of 14:56.70.
Buscomb’s time placed her 30th of the 32 athletes over the two heats and completed a disappointing championships after she also tailed out in the 10,000m.
‘‘I wasn’t intending on leading but I wanted to be in a position near the front because I knew that was my only chance to feel part of it,’’ she said.
‘‘I thought I could have hung on as long as possible, and I did hang on. But I didn’t have it.’’
Though the effort in qualifying for her first world championships had left her short of her best in London, the 27-year-old felt the experience would stand her in good stead.
‘‘I’ll learn a lot from this,’’ she said. ‘‘It was pretty daunting in the 10k and I felt a little more in control today. I didn’t run super-fast, as the last part of the race I was on my own.’’ It wasn’t Wayde van Niekerk and it wasn’t Isaac Makwala.
Instead, Ramil Guliyev of Turkey earned the upset of the world championships on Thursday (Friday NZ time) when he matched Van Niekerk stride for stride and won the 200-metre title by lunging at the line just ahead of the favoured South African.
Jereem Richards of Trinidad and Tobago took bronze, while Makwala faded down the stretch and finished sixth.
Guliyev, a little-known 27-yearold sprinter who transferred nationality from Azerbaijan six years ago, was not even among the top-10 performers this year before he stunned his rivals and the 60,000-strong sellout crowd at the Olympic Stadium, which had come to see Van Niekerk and Makwala fight for gold.
Guliyev finished in 20.09 seconds, .02 seconds ahead of both Van Niekerk and Richards. The South African took silver by .001 seconds.
‘‘It didn’t bother me the attention was on them,’’ Guliyev said. ‘‘Maybe at the next competition, everyone will look at me instead.’’
Guliyev held his hands over his mouth in sheer disbelief after the slow race.
Van Niekerk can only be disappointed with gold and silver. He fell just short of getting the first 200-400 double at the world championships since Michael Johnson in 1995. Still, he was upbeat. ‘‘Coming away with two medals — both a good colour, gold and silver. I think it’s great for my career,’’ the 400-metre Olympic and world champion said.
In the first 200m final without Usain Bolt since 2009, it was wide open from the start.
Van Niekerk was slightly ahead coming off the bend but could not make his fluent stride count as Guliyev stuck with him all the way.
Makwala, at the end of the saga that started with a stomach virus early in the week followed by a belated entry in the heats, failed to sustain the early pace and quickly fell out of contention.
‘‘The last 50 metres I was feeling tired. The lactic came,’’ Makwala said. ‘‘I’ve had one of the craziest championship journeys ever.’’
As shocking as the 200 turned out to be, the triple jump was predictable - another great fight between American team-mates Christian Taylor and Will Claye.
As usual, Taylor came out on top. The two-time Olympic champion won with a leap of 17.68 metres. Claye, the runner-up behind Taylor at the last two Olympics, was 5 centimetres behind for silver.
‘‘Will Claye makes it difficult for me every time,’’ Taylor said. ‘‘This final was a fight. I enjoyed it.’’