Pocket Rocket Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce Strikes Again
Olympic and World champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce added the 60m title to her name yesterday when she took victory in a world-leading personal best (PB) of 6.98secs at the World Indoor Championships in Sopot, Poland. The win makes Fraser-Pryce the second woman in history, after her compatriot Veronica Campbell-Brown, to win World titles in the 60m, 100m and 200m.
The 27-year-old entered Sunday’s final with the second fastest time of 7.08, which she registered to win her semi-final earlier in the afternoon. The red-hot Ivorian Murielle Ahoure had the bookies attention with her 7.06 fastest-of-the-three semi-finals.
With her signature bullet start, the Jamaican hit top gear in a jiffy, leaving Ahoure to take the silver (for the second successive championships) in a season’s best of 7.01, followed by USA’s Tianna Bartoletta with the bronze in 7.06.
“It reminds me of the Olympics,” she said after the race, referring to the fact that she is relatively new to the 60m as she was to the Olympics when she won the 100m in 2008. In this race, as it was then, she won from a line-up of seasoned competitors.
Asked how she felt about it, the so-called Pocket Rocket said: “To be honest, I’m not warming up to it; I don’t like it. So much can go wrong [such as] not nailing the start, and there goes the gold.”
The 2012 defending champion Campbell-Brown, a competitor of outstanding championship pedigree and temperament, showed a serious lack of race-readiness, having just returned to competition over the weekend. It was the 31-year-old’s first race of the season since the Court of Arbitration for Sports cleared her in a hurry of doping charges to resume her career a week ago.
The US 4x400m women, who were second to defending champions Great Britain in 2012, struck gold this time. They led from the outset with Natasha Hastings passing to Joanna Atkins in 51.95. Atkins then put in a 50.85 split to hand over to Francena McCorory, the individual 400m champion who clocked 50.36 and then handed over to anchor Cassandra Tate, who posted 51.67. Their winning time of 3:24.83 was a North American indoor record, surpassed only by Russia.
Jamaica was next to the line with a national indoor record of 3:26.54. Kaliese Spencer, the 400m silver medalist overtook Britain on the third leg and passed to Stephanie McPherson, who opened the gap on British anchor and World 400m champion Christine Ohuruogu. Britain clocked 3:27.90 – almost a second faster than their winning time in Istanbul two years ago.
Gold for Cuba’s Silva
And while sprinters were burning up the track, rivals in the field events rivals were keeping spectators at the edge of their seats.
Having won bronze in Moscow last year and silver at the 2012 London Olympics, Cuba’s Yarisley Silva improved her hardware to gold in the pole vault.
In what can be easily described one of the best quality indoor competitions of all time, ten women cleared 4.55 meters, seven vaulted 4.65 and four of those got over 4.70, the highest mark of the competition.
Silva’s first-attempt clearance at that height proved crucial and gave her the gold. Jirina Svobodova and Anzhelika Sidorova needed two attempts to clear that height and ended up sharing the silver medal.
Jenn Suhr, the American World indoor record-holder finished in fifth; tied with hometown girl Anna Rogowska at 4.65m. The 2011 Daegu World champion Fabiana Murer cleared 4.70m, but was fourth on count-back.
At the end of the competition, the U.S. sat atop the medal table with 12 medals – eight gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze, followed by Russia with 3-2-0; Ethiopia, 2-2-1; Great Britain, 1-2-3; and Jamaica, 1-2-2.