Hobbs through
Kiwi sprinter Zoe Hobbs broke her own Oceania and national records to power into the 100m semifinals at the world championships in Eugene, Oregon.
Hobbs clocked 11.08sec in the first of seven heats at Hayward Field yesterday, good enough for second and an automatic spot in today’s semifinals.
Having dashed out of the blocks in lane seven, it edged the 11.09sec mark she set at the Oceania championships in Australia last month, continuing her hot form ahead of the Commonwealth Games.
But there was no repeat of Saturday’s scenes for fellow Kiwi Eddie Osei-Nketia, who clocked a sluggish 10.29sec to finish seventh in his 100m semifinal shortly after Hobbs lit up the track, but Maddison Wesche threw a massive personalbest by 40cm with a 19.50m effort to finish seventh in the final of the women’s shot.
Osei-Nketia’s time was well off the scorching pace he showed on Saturday, when he blitzed home in 10.08sec to shatter his dad’s 28-yearold national record and advance to the semifinals.
Up against American flier Fred Kerley, one of four athletes in the semifinal to have gone under 10sec this season, Osei-Nketia was always going to be up against it, and so it proved.
Needing a top-two finish to gain automatic entry to the final, he was slow out of the blocks and never recovered.
When all three semifinals were said and done, only China’s Bingtian Su (10.30sec) recorded a slower time.
“Honestly, today’s race wasn’t the best, I just felt like I tightened up really quickly. Kerley and [Christian] Coleman got the jump on me,” OseiNketia said. “I was just too tight, I was fighting with myself, and it ended up as that result. I’m a little bit disappointed with that, but making it to semifinals with Coleman and Kerley, I can’t be happier than that.”
Kerley later won gold in the final in 9.86sec as US sprinters also captured bronze and silver.
Hobbs, who will attempt to go a step further than Osei-Nketia this afternoon, is without her coach, James Mortimer, who is marooned in New Zealand because of an untimely