Caster in the Diamond League
DEMONSTRATING some fine front-running
Semenya served as a pacemaker to the rest of the quality 800m field, crossing the line in a time of one minute, 55.27 seconds.
She went through the bell in 56.06 seconds, with a sizeable gap on the chasing pack which were left trailing in her wake.
World bronze medallist Ajee Wilson of the United States followed in a distant second place with a time of 1:57.86, with Jamaican Natoya Goule bagging bronze in 1:58.49.
Semenya follows in the footsteps of Kenyan Eunice Jepkoech Sum, who won three Diamond Trophies on the trot in 2013, 2014 and 2015 in the 800m.
Semenya will next be lining up at her home away from home in Berlin on Sunday which she considers as the birthplace of her athletics career.
She will race the 1 000m at the ISTAF Berlin meeting where she could take another stab at the world best over the two-and-a-half lap race.
South African women’s 100m record-holder Carina Horn finished last in the sprint final clocking 11.54 seconds yesterday.
Pieter Conradie could be considered one of the luckiest athletes with the 23-yearold athlete getting a lane in the 400m final for a second consecutive year. The one-lap sprinter has managed to get himself into the final for a shot at $50 000 despite being ranked 21st on the Diamond standings. * Eight South Africans in total were in action in the Zurich last night, but finished too late for the print deadline. A detailed report of all the results is available on www. iol.co.za
Meanwhile, former senior Kenyan athletics official David Okeyo has been banned from the sport for life and fined $50 000 after being found guilty of diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars of sponsorship payments for his personal use.
Okeyo, a former secretary-general and vice president of Athletics Kenya (AK) as well as a member of the IAAF Council, and Joseph Kinyua, a former treasurer of Athletics Kenya, were investigated by the sport’s ethics board in relation to payments made by US sportswear company Nike between 2003 and 2015.
In a 74-page judgement released yesterday, the board found that on many occasions Okeyo did not disclose to AK the withdrawals of the Nike money he made from AK bank accounts and he could also not show any evidence of what the money had been used for.
He was thus found to have breached the ethics code on 10 occasions after taking sponsorship money that “could have been better directed to support the development of the sport of athletics in Kenya” and expelled him from his position on the IAAF Council.
He was ordered to pay the $50 000 fine to AK.
Kinyua was found by the board to have “engaged in similar conduct” but as he was not an IAAF official at the time, it was deemed that he was not bound by the ethics rules in place at the time and hence he escaped sanction.
The two men, along with former AK president Isaiah Kiplagat, were provisionally suspended at the end of 2015. Kiplagat has since died and consequently the ethics board dropped its investigation into his activities.
Okeyo and Kinyua deny wrongdoing saying that the money was legitimate payment for their own expenses and expertise, and for payments they personally made to athletes.
“My lawyers will appeal the ruling. I think it’s discriminatory. All three of us were signatories to our bank. We will appeal,” Okeyo said.
Kinyua told Reuters yesterday that he was happy with the decision and that “justice was done”. – Reuters