BRUSSELS: World champion Dafne Schippers swept away any doubts she will be a gold medal contender at next year’s Rio de Janeiro Olympics, crossing the finishing line at Friday’s season-ending Diamond League Van Damme meet with one index finger held proudly in the air.

The Dutchwoman won a stirring 200m and showed she has finishing speed to pull clear and finish in 22.12 seconds, with Olympic champion Allyson Felix grimacing to the extent that even her elegant stride deserted her.

“It makes me especially happy to beat someone like her,” Schippers said. “There are few better. I feel delighted.”

Even though Schippers took the 200m world title in Beijing two weeks ago, there remained a big question as to who was the fastest over the distance since Felix skipped the half lap because of a scheduling problem and won the 400m instead.

Felix said her final 100 metres was lacking, perhaps a result of focusing on the 400m for most of the season, but commended Schippers on an incredible year.

“That’s a big confidence booster and you expect her to do well,” she said. “I think there’s just a lot of new talent in the 200 metres and that’s something exciting to have.”

In the men’s sprints, controversial American Justin Gatlin, who has been banned twice for doping, narrowly won the 100 metres in 9.98 seconds, dipping at just the right time ahead of Qatar’s Femi Ogunode, who was given the same time.

Gatlin had also agreed to race the 200 metres an hour later after world and Olympic champion Usain Bolt withdrew earlier in the week, citing a need to recharge.

However, after feeling a twinge in his thigh towards the end of the 100 metres, Gatlin too decided his season was at an end, leaving Ogunode to win the 200 metres in an Asian record time of 19.97 seconds.

Unbeaten until the world championships, Gatlin described his season as bittersweet.

“I was poised to go out there [in Beijing] and win. To be able to come away with two [silver] medals though, is sweet,” he said.

After his disappointment at the world championships, where he won a third bronze medal, France’s Olympic champion and world record holder Renaud Lavillenie claimed a convincing victory in the pole vault.

He cleared a best of 5.95 metres to ensure yet another Diamond League season win in the discipline, an unprecendented feat stretching back to 2010.

The best competition of the event came early in the triple jump, where Colombia’s Caterine Ibarguen again put the longest active winning streak in athletics — three years — on the line. It was close.

She was still in third place on her last triple jump attempt, and again proved her resilience by bouncing back with a last jump of 14.60 metres to sweep past Israeli Hanna Knyazheva-Minenko and Russian Yekaterina Koneva and clinch her 30th straight win.

In a sad end to what has been one of the season’s great battles, Cuban Pedro Pablo Pichardo had to retire early in the men’s triple jump, leaving American world champion Christian Taylor to extend his dominance in the event with a winning 17.59m.

Other track highlights came when Tunisian Habiba Ghribi clocked the third fastest time ever in the women’s 3000m steeplechase (9:05.36) and Kenyan Faith Kipyegon timed the fourth fastest time in the women’s mile, an African record of 4:16.71.

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2015

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