SHANGHAI: Britain’s Reece Prescod burst out of nowhere to upstage world champion Justin Gatlin and beat the wet weather to win a thrilling 100m on the line in Shanghai on Saturday.

Running unnoticed out in lane number nine, the unheralded 22-year-old grabbed a shock victory by a whisker from China’s Su Bingtian with his time of 10.04sec, just 0.01sec shy of his personal best.

Su, who along with the home crowd thought he had retained his Diamond League Shanghai title, was second in 10.05sec, with fellow Chinese Xie Zhenye third.

The American Gatlin came a disappointing seventh and Canadian speedster Andre De Grasse, working his way back from a long injury layoff, was down in eighth.

In the men’s 110m hurdles, Jamaica’s reigning world and Olym­pic champion Omar McLeod was left praying for victory on the finishing line before he could celebrate a third Shanghai win in a row.

His time of 13.16sec was the joint fastest in the world this year and it had to be to pip Spain’s Orlando Ortega with 13.17sec.

McLeod said that his early season had been badly disrupted by various niggling injuries.

“Today I was running on blind trust,” said the 24-year-old, adding that he was “overcome with emotion”.

“It was great to come out here and complete the three-peat.”

KENDRICKS FLOPS

In the men’s pole vault a highly anticipated battle between France’s world-record-holder Ren­aud Lavillenie and world cham­pion Sam Kendricks of the United States failed to materialise.

On the eve of the Shanghai meet Kendricks had predicted “a dogfight”, but in the event it was nothing of the sort, the American going out early after failing to clear 5.61m, well below his personal best of 6.0m.

In hazy conditions and under occasional light showers that were to turn into heavy rain, that opened the way for his friend and great rival Lavillenie to win on countback from Poland’s Piotr Lisek, both clearing 5.81m.

The 25-year-old Kendricks refused to use the light rain at the time as an excuse, but said that he had been forced to rush his warm-up.

“Every vault competition is its own challenge — here we had the rain, the new track, travelling so far,” he told AFP.

“Everything was rushed,” he said, detailing how the rain had hurt his chances.

“The competition starts very quickly and everyone has to make decisions very fast. Usually I am good at this, but today it caught me off guard.” Another world champion, Dafne Schippers of the Netherlands, displayed some early season rustiness as she came a distant second in the women’s 200m behind Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas, who won in a meeting-record 22.06sec.

Shanghai is the second stop in the Diamond League calendar.

Published in Dawn, May 13th, 2018