Manyonga snatches long-jump in Zurich

Luvo Manyonga outduelled countryman Ruswahl Samaai to snatch the Diamond League long-jump final in Zurich on Thursday night.

Caster Semenya won her third consecutive 800m Diamond League crown as she led from the start, to clock 1min 55.27sec for a convincing win by more than two seconds.

But it was a nail-biting affair in the men’s long jump, where Manyonga took the lead in the first round with a jump of 8.32m.

When Samaai hit back with an identical 8.32m in the fourth round he took the lead on countback because his secondbest jump of 8.26m was 1cm further than Manyonga’s second effort.

But Manyonga, the reigning 2017 world champion, bagged the victory with the final jump of the night as he floated to 8.36m to bag the $50,000 first prize.

Semenya’s effort was more than a second slower than the 1:54.25 season’s best she clocked in Paris in July, but it still goes down as the third-fastest time of 2018.

“It was a long month of racing for me now,” Semenya said. “I feel it on my body.”

American Ajee Wilson was second in 1:57.86 and Natoya Goule of Jamaica third in 1:58.49, with Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi, the second-fastest athlete of the year, a distant sixth in 1:59.11.

Of the other South Africans, Cornel Fredericks had the best finish, finishing fifth in the men’s 400m hurdles. Carina Horn (women’s 100m), Luxolo Adams (men’s 200m) and Pieter Conradie (men’s 400m) were seventh, and Wenda Nel (women’s 400m hurdles) ended eighth.