Triple steeplechase joy for Kenya’s Kemboi
KENYAN Ezekiel Kemboi became a three-time 3 000m steeplechase world champion last night on day five of the IAAF World Championships in Moscow.
The 31-year-old has an impressive medal tally, with world championship golds in 2007 and 2009 as well as Olympic golds in 2004 and 2012.
His countryman, Conseslus Kipruto, came in second, with the pair having dominated from the start.
It was only after clearing the final water jump that Kemboi surged ahead of Kipruto to take the gold.
Great drama followed the steeplechase, when a photo-finish was needed to separate Jehue Gordon of Trinidad and Tobago and America’s Michael Tinsley in the men’s 400m hurdles final.
Both runners stretched their torsos out at the end of the race and both found themselves down on the track, but it was Gordon who took the gold by 0.01 seconds.
In the women’s 400m hurdles it was nothing like as close a race as Zuzana Hejnová of the Czech Republic won gold with a time of 52.83, 1.26 seconds ahead of America’s Dalilah Muhammad.
The final track event of the night saw Abeba Aregawi of Sweden comfortably take gold in the women’s 1 500m.
With most of the action happening on the track, there were however two field events in the form of the women’s triple jump and the men’s high jump.
In the former event, after an afternoon of intense battle, the gold finally went the way of Colombia’s Caterine Ibargüen, whose mark of 14.85m earned her her first medal at the championships.
The Colombian was pushed until the end by determined Russian Ekaterina Koneva, whose best distance was 14.81m.
The men’s high jump event was highly entertaining, as Ukraine’s Bohdan Bondarenko took gold.
After a strong challenge from Mutaz Essa Barshim of Qatar, Bondarenko clinched victory with a championship record height of 2.41m.
The 23- year- old then had the crowd’s full attention as he attempted to clear 2.46, which would have broken the 20-year-old world record of 2.45m set by Javier Sotomayor of Cuba.
It was be the second time that Bondarenko took a tilt at breaking the record after he attempted 2.47m at the Anniversary Games in London last month.
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