Sport - Athletics

Justin Gatlin sets World record at Qatar GP

DOHA: Olympic champion. World champion. Now, Justin Gatlin is the world record holder, too.

The American sprinter broke the 100-metre record on Friday with a time of 9.76 seconds at the Qatar Grand Prix. He shaved one-hundredth of a second off the mark of 9.77 seconds set by Jamaica's Asafa Powell on June 14, 2005, in Athens.

"This was a perfect race," Gatlin said. "I am a competitor and I promised I would get the world record and I have done it. I don't go for world records. They come to me."

The 24-year-old Gatlin won the 100 and 200 at the World championships in Helsinki, Finland, last August. He said on Monday he intended to break the record in Doha.

"It is amazing I did it," Gatlin said. "It took a lot of discipline and dedication. You will see many more performances like this from me in the future."

Good start

Gatlin was quick out of the starting blocks and running even with fellow American Terrence Trammel for the first 50 metres. Only in the last 40 metres did Gatlin surge into the lead.

After crossing the line, Gatlin went over to the stands and hugged members of the U.S. team as the crowd of 10,000 gave him a standing ovation. He then knelt on the track with a bouquet a flowers presented by a Qatari hostess and posed for photographs next to the electronic scoreboard showing his time of 9.76.

To avoid the extreme Gulf heat, the race was run under floodlights at 8 p.m. local time (1700 GMT) with temperatures at 28 degrees centigrade (84 Fahrenheit).

Olusoji Fasuban of Nigeria finished second in 9.84 seconds, with Shawn Crawford of the United States third in 10.08.

Special Correspondent adds from New Delhi

Anju George could manage only the seventh place as she limped through a wind-swept long jump competition at the Qatar Super Grand Prix meeting here on Saturday night.

The 29-year-old Asian champion, ranked fourth in the world, had an opening round jump of 6.43 as her best and that proved way behind the gold-medal winner Oksana Udmurtova's season-leading 7.02 metres, a personal best for the fifth-ranked Russian. Olympic champion Tatyana Lebedeva, also of Russia, was second with 6.97m, while Commonwealth Games champion Bronwyn Thompson of Australia took the bronze at 6.76.

Hungarian Tunde Vaszi (6.53m), Romanian Alina Militaru (6.53m) and American Brianna Glenn (6.47) came ahead of Anju.

Anju had made light of a heel injury, suffered during training in Bangalore just two days before leaving, while resuming her competitive phase after the Commonwealth Games in Doha.

Anju said that her injured right heel did cause pain during her take-offs.

"I was not able to gain the height required after take-off ," she said. She had other jumps of 6.36, 6.38 and a foul in the four attempts that were allowed in the competition.

No fracture

Anju said that the injury might take a few more days to heal, but since there was no fracture there was nothing much to worry about. The Indian record holder was, however, doubtful of her participation in the first leg of the Asian Grand Prix meet at Bangkok on May 18. She was confident that she would have recovered fully by the time the Bangalore (May 22) and Pune

(May 26) legs came up.

Anju has decided to skip the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, US, on May 28. She would have required to make a dash to the US from Pune, involving a travel of 22 hours, and would have had no rest before competing.

Anju, the only Indian to win a World championship medal, has had a disappointing season so far with a silver at the Asian Indoor championships at Pattaya (6.32m), and the sixth place (6.54m) at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. In between, she failed to make the final in the World Indoor championships in Moscow with a leap of 6.34 metres.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu