The 4x100 relay produced the biggest surprise on Friday with Italy winning its first men’s 4x100m medal since the 1948 Olympics. And this time it was gold!
After Lamont Jacobs won a surprise gold in the 100m, Filipoo Tortu produced a fine anchor leg and pipped Great Britain’s Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake, to grab the gold by one-hundredth of a second in a national record 37.50s.
In the women’s event, the Jamaicans appeared anxious, worried whether they had messed up the first baton exchange where they finished first, till the official results announced them as winner in 41.02s.
A month ago, Shaunae Miller-Uibo had planned to skip the quartermile which brought her a gold at Rio 2016. The 27-year-old from the Bahamas had been working on a 200-400m double at the Tokyo Olympics but was unhappy with the scheduling of the events and had spoken about dropping the longer race.
But Miller-Uibo, who had finished last in the 200m final, lined up for the 400m on Friday night and pulled off a comfortable victory in a personal best 48.36s. With that, she became the second woman after Marie-Jose Perec to take back-to-back 400m titles at the Olympics.
Felix makes history
USA’s Allyson Felix produced a brilliant finish to take bronze. It was her 10th medal and with that she became the most-decorated female track Olympian in the world.
Kenya’s Faith Kipyogen, who had been training with legends like marathon world record holder Eliud Kipchoge and hearing their inspiring tales every day, thwarted World champion’s Sifan Hassan’s plans of winning a distance treble in Tokyo by retaining the 1500m title by pulling ahead after the bell. Hassan won bronze.
Meanwhile, the Indian men 4x400m relay team, comprising Muhammed Anas, Noah Nirmal Tom, Arokia Rajiv and Amoj Jacob, ran a brilliant race and shattered the Asian record clocking 3:00.25s while finishing fourth in the first heat. The quartet narrowly finished ninth overall and missed entering the final.
Shiying’s surprise win
China’s Shiying Liu won a surprise gold in women’s javelin with a 66.34m, while Joshua Cheptegei, the World champion and world record holder, ran a controlled race to take the men’s 5000m gold. in 12:58.15s.
Indian women walkers, Priyanka Goswami (1:32.36s) and Bhawna Jat (1:37.38) finished 17th and 32nd respectively in the 20km event while Gurpreet Singh failed to finish the 50km walk.
