The Hindu : Sport : Borchin walks to 10km gold

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Borchin walks to 10km gold

Bolt, Gay cruise into 100m semifinals

— PHOTO: AP

GOLDEN STROLL: Russia’s Valeriy Borchin celebrates the men’s 20km walk triumph in Berlin on Saturday.

BERLIN: Olympic champion Usain Bolt and reigning world champion Tyson Gay cruised into the semifinals of the men’s 100m on the opening day of the World Athletics Championships here on Saturday.

In sultry conditions at the Olympic Stadium, it was Bolt’s teammate and former world record holder Asafa Powell, however, who set the pace.

The bronze medallist from the 2007 Osaka worlds looked very comfortable when racing home to win his quarterfinal in 9.95sec.

Bolt was beaten into second in his heat by training partner Daniel Bailey of Antigua, with the two sprinters easing up and even laughing together as they crossed the line in just over 10sec.

Fastest time

In the US camp, defending triple world sprint champion Gay showed no signs of his groin injury to cruise through in the second fastest time of 9.98sec along with his trio of teammates Darvis Patton, Michael Rodgers and Monzavous Edwards.

In what is building up to be a USA v Jamaica sprint-off, Jamaican Michael Frater also qualified for Sunday’s semifinals.

First gold

In the morning session, Russian Olympic champion Valeriy Borchin claimed the first gold of the championships when he won the men’s 20 kilometres walk title ahead of China’s Wang Hao and Mexican Eder Sanchez.

Borchin was chasing a breakaway trio for more than half the race before he made his move, winning in 1 hour, 18.41 minutes. Wang stayed with him until the final stages, but the Russian wore him down near the end.

“My coach was helping me a lot in every critical moment,” Borchin said.

“I was trying to prevent the other athletes to go far away from me. The most important thing was not to leave the group.”

Borchin, who served a one-year suspension for doping that ended May 31, 2006, beat Wang by 25 seconds. Sanchez was 41 seconds behind.

After becoming the youngest ever Olympic walking champion last year, Borchin has added the world title at 22.

“I have got a lot of experience with races like this one,” Borchin said. “This was just one in a row.”

Wang missed out on a medal at the Beijing Olympics, finishing fourth, but he got one this time.

“Tomorrow is my birthday,” Wang said. “This is a nice birthday gift.”

Jessica leads

After the first three events of the heptathlon, Britain’s Jessica Ennis remained in pole position on 3,070 points having recorded field leads of 12.93sec in the 100m hurdles and 1.92m in the high jump, and a personal best of 14.14m in the shot put.

An impressive season’s best of 15.82m saw Olympic champion Nataliya Dobrynska move from sixth spot to second on 2,932 points.

Susmita way behind

India’s Susmita Singha Roy was lying 27th out of 28 contestants still in the fray at the end of the third event, shot put, with 2266 points.

The Bengal woman had 14.55s for the 100m hurdles, 1.62m in high jump and 11.15m in shot put.

She pushed up from the 29th position after shot put only because one athlete, Sara Aerts of Belgium, dropped out after two events and Bettie Wade of the US, who was ninth earlier, registered a ‘no mark’ in shot put.

Panocha’s record

Babubhai Panocha clocked a National record of 1:23:06 to finish a creditable 20th among 50 starters.

Panocha had clocked his previous National mark of 1:24:05 while qualifying for the World meet at the Polish National championship in Bydgoszcz only a fortnight earlier.

Panocha was lying 33rd at the 5km mark, 29th at the 10km point and 26th with five kilometres left to the finish.

Favourites through

In the men’s shot put, all the favourites qualified for the final.

Olympic champion Tomasz Majewski of Poland recorded the longest putt of 21.19 metres on his first effort, with Belarus duo Pavel Lyzhyn and Andrei Mikhnevich close behind.

The American trio of Olympic silver medallist Christian Cantwell, Adam Nelson and reigning world champion Reese Hoffa also qualified although the latter failed to hit the minimum qualification mark of 20.30m. — Agencies

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