Dos Santos dethrones Warholm as hurdles king

AFP

Eugene, July 21 : Alison Dos Santos ended Karsten Warholm's reign as hurdles king at the world championships on Tuesday while Britain's Jake Wightman won his country's first 1500m gold in 39 years on a day of upsets.

Warholm may have been behind one of the most iconic moments in Olympic history when he smashed the 29-year-old world record to win the 400m hurdles at the Tokyo Games in a time of 45.94sec.

But the 26-year-old came to Eugene on the back of a hamstring injury which ultimately put paid to his medal attempt here.

Instead, Dos Santos ran the third fastest time of all time and a championship record of 46.29sec to win gold ahead of Americans Rai Benjamin and Trevor Bassitt.

"It's pretty awesome to win the world title on this track. I didn't care about the time because this is the first time I win a world title," said Dos Santos.

Warholm led coming into the home straight but seized up badly and eventually came in seventh (48.42), breaking a winning streak of 22 races, including 18 finals, dating back to September 2018.

"It was a very tough race," Warholm said. "I had an injury but to me, it's always your fight and giving your all and leaving it all on the track.

Whilst everyone knew Warholm was coming back from injury, serious hopes were pinned on Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the men's 1500m.

But Wightman had not read the script, playing the Norwegian at his own game by kicking with 200 meters to run and holding his form through to the line.

Wightman sealed victory in 3min 29.23sec, Ingebrigtsen taking silver in 3:29.47, with Spaniard Mohamed Katir claiming bronze (3:29.90).

Australian Eleanor Patterson won high jump gold in the fourth final of the night with 2.02m on countback from Ukraine's Yaroslava Mahuchikh, Italian Elena Vallortigara taking bronze.

"I'm honestly speechless right now," Patterson said afterward. "I'm already starting to get sore cheeks from smiling."

The new obstacle in steeplechase: a cameraman

A new obstacle appeared out of nowhere on the steeplechase course at the world championships. A cameraman.

Trying to get a great shot of the triple jump competition going on in the infield Monday night, a World Athletics cameraman stepped onto the track, unaware that there was a live race going on behind him.

As a phalanx of runners was approaching the cameramen, the runners spread out to pass him and nobody was hurt.

"I was a little worried that he was going to dart one way or another, right at the last second," said Evan Jager of the U.S., who finished sixth. "Thankfully he didn't realize we were there until we all passed him."

Morocco's Soufiane El Bakkali won the race in a time of 8 minutes, 25.13 seconds.

He was involved in the strange scene, though maybe not as harrowing as seven years ago at worlds in Beijing. Usain Bolt had just won the 200 meters and a cameraman riding a portable scooter lost control of the scooter and it tumbled onto the track and upended Bolt. He jumped up and dusted himself off, no worse for wear.

World Athletics President Seb Coe said the federation is looking into what happened.

"I don't want to be cavalier about these things," he said. "But these things happen. He did actually have the presence to recognize what was going on, and he stood still, which is the most important thing. He didn't move."