Americans’ gold medal count grows
HELSINKI, Finland – The United States is bringing home a record haul of gold from the world track and field championships. It won’t win one in the women’s 1,600-meter relay, though.
The U.S. team easily won its preliminary heat Saturday night but was disqualified for “multiple lane violations.” The ruling did not say specifically where the infraction occurred. An appeal was denied.
It was the second relay foul-up for the United States. The men dropped the baton on the first exchange of the 400-meter relay preliminary Friday night.
Before the disqualification, it was another great night for the Americans.
Olympic champion Dwight Phillips repeated as long jump champion and the women’s 400-meter relay team raced to victory to give the Americans 13 gold medals.
The total matches the record set by the 1993 U.S. team in Stuttgart, Germany, and the Americans are heavy favorites to add one more today in the men’s 1,600 relay.
The United States got two medals when Lashinda Demus and Sandra Glover finished second and third behind Russian world record holder Yuliya Pechonkina in the 400 hurdles.
The Americans have 24 medals overall, two shy of the 26 they took home from Tokyo in 1991.
Phillips won the long jump in a hurry, soaring 28 feet, 2 3/4 inches on his first attempt. He fouled on his remaining five jumps, but that didn’t matter. No one could come close to his first one.
Phillips’ mark matched his personal best. No one has jumped farther in the past five years.
The near-capacity crowd at the 40,000-seat Olympic Stadium finally got a chance to cheer wildly and wave their blue and white flags when Finland won its first medal, a bronze in the long jump by Tommi Evila. It was not the first time that a victory by Phillips was almost unnoticed.
“In some type of way, I always feel like I’m getting overshadowed,” Phillips said. “But I did win tonight, and I do feel like I’m capable of breaking this world record.”
Mike Powell set the world mark of 29-4 1/2 at what is considered the greatest long jump event in the sport’s history, in 1991 at the world championships in Tokyo. Powell had Carl Lewis to push him that day. No one is close to challenging Phillips, unless the champ has an off day.
Britain’s Paula Radcliffe won the women’s marathon with a championship-record time of 2:20:57. Defending champion Catherine Ndereba of Kenya was second in 2:22:01.
The U.S. women won the 400 relay in 41.78 seconds.
Ethiopia’s Tirunesh Dibaba, 19, completed an unprecedented distance-running sweep by defending her title in the 5,000 meters, one week after winning the 10,000.
Dibaba outsprinted Meseret Defar down the final 80 meters to win in a meet record 14 minutes, 38.59 seconds.