Bowie shocks Thompson to snatch gold
American triumphs in dramatic women’s 100m Ta Lou takes silver as favourite is left trailing
Tori Bowie was still patching up her cuts and bruises after hurling herself across the line like a human cannonball. She hit the deck in a blur of limbs, but no amount of discomfort in the treatment room could dilute her euphoria. After all, this fast-moving, God-fearing daughter of a one-horse town in Mississippi had just eclipsed Elaine Thompson, the reigning double Olympic champion, to announce her stardom with a first global 100 metres title. Smiling through the pain was easy.
“I knew that I wanted to leave everything on the line,” said Bowie, who leaned hard at the finish to pip Marie-josee Ta Lou of the Ivory Coast by one hundredth of a second, in 10.85. “The dive doesn’t feel too good now, but it has saved me at championships in the past. I was trying to do a modest lean, but for some reason I lost control of my body. I thought I was a medallist but I had no idea until the result appeared on the scoreboard.”
It had been the strangest of finals, one expected to be dominated by Thompson but instead heralding Bowie’s arrival as a major force in sprinting. Only three years ago, she was still a specialist long jumper, until a sense of restlessness persuaded her to switch disciplines. On this evidence, as she left the best in the world flailing in her wake, the decision could hardly have been better timed.
“I bet I’m the only person in the world who believed that I would come out here and win the 100 metres,” she said, beaming. “I learned always to follow your heart. The rest were asking me, ‘Oh my god, why are you choosing the 100 over the 200?’
“I replied, ‘It’s just how I’m feeling.’ This is the event where I want to be world champion in, and it happened tonight.”
Bowie could be forgiven for being overcome by emotion. She endured a torrid childhood, finding herself put in foster care with her sister Tamara from the age of two. Her grandmother, who passed away recently fought a difficult custody battle to be able to take custody of the two sisters and raise them on her own in the community of Sandhill, Mississippi, so tiny that it does not have so much as a traffic light. “I’m pretty sure she’s watching me,” Bowie said. “I’m sure she’s grinning from ear to ear right now.”
After the night of a million sighs, when the curtain descended on Usain Bolt’s individual career with the rarest of defeats, Thompson fell short of salvaging any precious glory for Jamaica. After a ragged start, she lost her poise and never looked likely to recover, finishing a mere fifth in 10.98sec. Worryingly for an athlete of whom great feats have been expected, she claimed to have no idea what had gone wrong.
A partisan Jamaican crowd had gathered in force by the finish line to salute Thompson, but watched dumbfounded as Bowie tore past their poster-girl. Could Thompson’s struggles be blamed on the fact that she had been dealing with such a bothersome Achilles injury? During last month’s Anniversary Games at this stadium, she was forced to ditch her spikes for a pair of trainers.
There had seemed, until Bowie’s emergence from the pack, little doubt of any disruption to her supremacy here. The women’s 100m is a race that struggles to captivate like the men’s equivalent, in part because the world record, the staggering 10.49 seconds set by Florence Griffith-joyner at the US Olympic trials in 1988, remains so far out of reach. It is one benchmark that lends weight to arguments that the roster of Eighties records, established during an era of rampant doping, should be struck from the book.
Thompson has come closer than most to emulating these improbable standards.
Just last month, in Kingston, she streaked to victory in front of her home crowd in 10.71, a time only surpassed in recent years by compatriot Shelly-anne Fraser-pryce. Under the tutelage of prolifically successful coach Stephen Francis, also mentor to Asafa Powell, she has emerged as one of the most electrifying sprinting stars in years. The speed of her improvement in 2015, when she began to seize the mantle from Fraser-pryce, took even her team-mates aback.
Come the Tokyo Olympics, the smorgasbord of talent over this distance looks tantalising. Alongside Bowie, Holland’s Dafne Schippers, who took bronze here, will be hoping to gatecrash the party. After she won 200m gold in Beijing in 2015, the Dutchwoman with the Amazonian physique has flattered to deceive, slipping behind Thompson. But Bowie is now the young woman they all have to catch.