Semenya ends season in style
SHAVING almost a second off the previous mark, Caster Semenya set a new world 600m best at her home-away-from-home at the World Challenge in Berlin yesterday.
Semenya brought her season to an emphatic finish, clocking one minute, 21.77 seconds, improving the global mark set by Cuba’s Ana Fidelia Quirot back in 1997.
Lining up in the venue where she won her maiden world twolap title as a teenager in 2009, Semenya proved as dominant as she was eight years ago.
Semenya took the race out fast from the gun, making Belarus’s Ilona Usovich’s role as pacesetter obsolete as she led from start to finish, knocking 0.86 off Quirot’s previous mark.
The South African had famil- iar competition to contend with in London 800m medallists Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi and American Ajee Wilson.
She dragged Wilson below the previous world best, with the American clocking 1:22.39 for second place and Niyonsaba bagging the bronze in 1:23.18.
Semenya is the second South African this year to set a world best over a non-standard distance after double 400m world champion Wayde van Niekerk smashed the 300m global mark at the Ostrava Golden Spike meeting in June with 30.81 seconds.
Van Niekerk erased yet another Michael Johnson world mark when he knocked 0.04 seconds off the time the American set in Pretoria in 2000.
Clarence Munyai set a new world junior best in the same meeting, crossing the line in a time of 31.61.