DPA
Paris
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone of the United States has posted a world record 50.37 seconds for Olympic 400 metres hurdles gold at the Paris Games while rival Femke Bol was a distant third.
The duel between the two never materialised as McLaughlin-Levrone ran away from Bol and everyone else on the home straight and took .28 of a second off her own mark of 50.65 from earlier in the year for back to back Olympic gold.
World champion Bol, who had run 50.95 recently, tired dramatically and was in tears after having to settle for bronze in 52.15, nowhere near McLaughlin-Levrone and beaten for silver by American Anna Cockrell who ran a personal best 51.87. But Bol already has a Paris gold, from the 4x400m mixed relay.
Tebogo wins 200m for
first ever Botswana gold
Letsile Tebogo won a first ever Olympic gold medal for Botswana when he denied three Americans including 100 metres winner Noah Lyles in the 200m on Thursday.
Tebogo stormed to gold with 19.46 seconds for fifth on the all-time list and an African record.
Like at Tokyo 2020, Kenneth Bednarek took silver and Lyles bronze, clocking 19.62 and 19.70, respectively. The third American, Erriyon Knighton, came fourth.
Gold for Tebogo came after 100m silver and 200m bronze at last year’s world championships, where Lyles had won a second straight 100/200m double.
Lyles had won 100m gold in dramatic fashion in a personal best 9.79 seconds on Sunday, five-thousandths of a second ahead of Jamaican Kishane Thompson. Tebogo was sixth in that race.
Thursday’s other finals are the women’s 400m hurdles and long jump, and the men’s 110m hurdles and javelin.
New Zealand’s Andrews gets keirin gold
New Zealand’s world champion Ellesse Andrews showed her strength when as she led from the front to take gold in track cycling’s keirin event on Thursday.
Andrews rose from silver at Tokyo 2020 as she beat Dutch rider Hetty van de Wouw and Britain’s Emma Finucane who got silver and bronze, respectively.
It was a second medal for Finucane after team sprint gold earlier in the week, and a sixth for Britain in the velodrome.
Finucane will now turn her attention to the individual sprint, in which she is the reigning world champion, with qualifiers to start on Friday.
Three-time Commonwealth Games champion Andrews and Van De Wouw will also return for the sprint.
