STOCKHOLM, Sweden, CMC – Veterans Nesta Carter and Novlene Williams-Mills kept the Jamaica flag flying high with impressive wins in their pet events at the DN Galan Diamond League meet yesterday.
The Trinidad & Tobago pair of Keston Bledman and Jehue Gordon also collected podium finishes, but Olympic champion Keshorn Walcott finished outside of the top-three in javelin.
Carter clocked a season-best 9.96 seconds and was the only sprinter to dip below 10 seconds as he won the men’s 100 metres dash.
He finished 0.13 secs ahead of Bledman with Britain’s Chijindu Ujah finished third in the same time of fourth-placed Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Nickel Ashmeade from Jamaica on a chilly night in the Swedish capital.
The 32-year-old Williams-Mills, a breast cancer survivor, ran close to her season-best to upset Olympic champion Sanya Richards-Ross of the United States and the reigning American champion Francena McCorory, taking the women’s 400 in 50.09.
It was her fourth Diamond League 400 win for the season, following success in Oslo on June 11, Shanghai on May 18 and Eugene, Oregon, two weeks later.
Jamaica-born Richards-Ross clocked 50.27 and McCorory ran 50.65, with Commonwealth Games gold medallist Stephenie McPherson running 51.01 for fourth and her Jamaican compatriot Christine Day fifth in 52.03.
Gordon secured the other podium finish for the English-speaking Caribbean at the meet, when he ran a lethargic 50.13 to finish third in the men’s 400 hurdles, where Olympic and World silver medallist Michael Tinsley of the United States overtook Puerto Rico’s Javier Culson after the final barrier.
Tinsley won in 49.60 seconds, well off Culson’s world-leading 48.03 from June 14.
He also passed Culson in the Diamond League standings.
Walcott hurled 84.27 metres for a sixth-place finish in the men’s javelin, which was won by Finland’s Antti Ruuskanen with a distance of 87.24m.
On a night when European champions found things tough, Ruuskanen bucked the trend with his second effort.
Schillonie Calvert of Jamaica ran 23.57 and was only good enough for sixth place, failing to break the American dominance of the women’s 200 which was won by Allyson Felix with a time of 22.85, denying compatriot Tori Bowie from another statement win.
Olympic champion Felix continued on the comeback trail following a hamstring injury at the World Championships last year with her second Diamond League 200 victory this season, edging Bowie, the second-fastest woman in the 200 this year, by six-hundredths of a second with Joanna Atkins, another American, third.
O’Dayne Richards of Jamaica had a distance of 20.46m in the men’s shot putt, won by Olympic bronze medallist Reese Hoffa of the United States in a field that also included the reigning Olympic and World champions.
