EUGENE (AFP) – Kenya’s Emmanuel Korir and Pedro Pichardo of Portugal added world titles to their respective Olympic crowns on Saturday, but there was injury heartbreak for Canada’s Damian Warner in the decathlon.
Two other gold medallists from last year’s Tokyo Games had a mixed bag, Indian Neeraj Chopra having to content himself with silver in the men’s javelin, but Dutch runner Sifan Hassan leaving Eugene medal-less after finishing sixth in the women’s 5,000 metres (m).
The 4x100m relays saw the United States (US) women beat a loaded Jamaican team featuring individual sprint champions Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Shericka Jackson, to win gold, but a Canada team anchored by Olympic 200m champion Andre de Grasse beat the favoured US men’s team into silver.
“It felt great to do it, to spoil the party for them,” said De Grasse, who contracted COVID-19 three weeks before the championships and was too fatigued to race the 200m.
“We talked about this moment so many times. We came up a little bit short at the Olympics, and we were all like, we could do better… it’s a good way to end the championship.”
Korir produced a trademark kick from 200m out to win the men’s 800m in 1min 43.71sec, well ahead of Algerian Djamel Sedjati with silver and Canada’s Marco Arop bronze.
“I knew there were some guys close behind me in the last 100m,” Korir said.
“I was expecting someone to come, but no one did. I never shake my end in training but I do in races. It’s like magic. I have been working for this. It’s been a long wait – I failed in 2017 and 2019 and I made it now.”
Pichardo was imperious in the triple jump, all but tying up competition when he went out to 17.95m on his first attempt.
“I opened strongly,” the Cuban-born Pichardo said, adding that he had been mentally focused on the mythical 18m mark in a bid to better his two previous silvers.
“My mindset was focussed on 18m. It did not come out today, but more importantly, I won gold. This world title was elusive to me.”
In the absence of American multiple global medal winner Christian Taylor, world and Olympic bronze medallist Hugues Fabrice Zango of Burkina Faso claimed silver 40 centimetres off Pichardo, while China’s Zhu Yaming took bronze.