adminMOSCOW. — Russia will be gunning for a third and final race walk gold in the fifth day of action at the World Athletics Championships today. After gold-medal showings by Aleksandr Ivanov and Elena Lashmanova in the men and women’s 20km walks, the focus now turns to the longest race on the world championships programme, the men’s 50km walk — the women do not compete over that distance.
It is a demanding event, with athletes required to hold their technique and form for around four hours in strength-sapping conditions where morning humidity goes up to 80 percent, all the time in real competition.
Russian men have all but dominated the event, apart from a 2007-8 blip when, successively, Australian Nathan Deakes and Alex Schwazer of Italy won gold medals at global champs.
Sergey Kirdyapkin won the 2009 Berlin worlds and took gold at last year’s London Olympics and now-injured Sergey Bakulin led in a Russian 1-2 in Daegu two years ago, beating team-mate and world record-holder Denis Nizhegorodov for gold.
Kirdyapkin will be accompanied in Moscow by European Cup minor medallists Mikhail Ryzhov and Ivan Noskov for the walk.
Contenders for a podium place include Frenchman Yohann Diniz, a perennial contender at this event but not yet a medallist, and Erick Barrondo of Guatemala.
Australian Jared Tallent has also been a medallist in Beijing, Daegu and London without taking the biggest prize yet.
Back on the track, Ethiopian Olympic champion Meseret Defar gets a first run out in the 5 000m after being pulled from a 10 000m showdown with teammate and runaway gold medallist Tirunesh Dibaba.
Dibaba, who ran the world-leading 5 000m time of 14:23.68 earlier this season at the Paris Diamond League meet, has also been pulled from the 5 000m as the Ethiopian athletics federation blood a raft of up-and-coming youngsters.
“I am not disappointed that the federation didn’t want us to try to double,” Dibaba said.
“We have run many years and the upcoming athletes need the experience. Because that was how it was explained to me I don’t have any regrets at all. I am happy that they are getting experience.”
Defar has one gold (2007), a silver and two bronzes over the distance and will be favourite in the absence of defending champion Vivian Cheruiyot of Kenya, who is expecting her first child.
Also on today’s programme is women’s hammer throw qualification, and heats for the men’s 1 500m and long jump.
Meanwhile, Elena Lashmanova handed hosts Russia a second race walking gold yesterday, as Britain’s Mo Farah advanced to the 5 000m final in his bid for a middle-distance double.
After Aleksandr Ivanov’s victory in the men’s 20km walk on Sunday, it was Olympic champion and world record holder Lashmanova’s turn in the women’s 20km.
The 21-year-old led a Russian 1-2, coming through the line in sapping, humid conditions just 3sec ahead of teammate Anisya Kirdyapkina.
China’s Liu Hong snatched bronze after a third Russian, Vera Sokolova, was dramatically red carded by the judges as she entered the stadium. Lashmanova’s victory stretched a winning Russian women’s streak in the event that dates back to Edmonton, Canada, in 2001.
“I’m happy to win a gold medal in the capital of my home country,” Lashmanova said. “And I’m even more happy that we made it the Russian 1-2.
“It’s a pity that Vera was disqualified near the stadium at the end of the race, it could have been three of us on the podium.
“The victory is not of less importance than the Olympic one for me.”
On the track, there were similar tales of unwelcome early morning calls in the men’s 5 000m, in which Farah is bidding for victory to go with his gold-medal showing in the 10 000m on Saturday.
“It was pretty hard to get up in the morning as I am not a morning person, though I had to wake up at 6am,” moaned the Somali-born Farah, who cruised his heat, finishing in the fifth and final automatic qualifying spot for Friday’s final.
“I got to the final, that was my goal. Now I have to recover for the final.”
Importantly for Farah, his training partner under Alberto Salazar, Galen Rupp, the American who teams up with the Briton in races often dictated by Ethiopian or Kenyan team tactics, also qualified.
The double Olympic champion’s main rivals all qualified: the Ethiopian trio of Mukhta Edris, Hagos Gebrehiwet and Yenem Alamirew going through alongside Kenyans Edwin Soi, Isiah Koech and Thomas Longosiwa, and Kenyan-born US 2007 world champion Bernard Lagat.
Gebrehiwet admitted that he almost missed his heat altogether.
“We made a big mistake this morning and took the wrong bus from the hotel,” he said.
“We had to go back to the hotel and find a minibus that could bring us quickly to the stadium.
“We arrived so late that we went straight into the race without a proper warm-up, but luckily everything went well.”
There was no joy in the field, however, for defending world high jump champion Jesse Williams of the United States, who finished 23rd with a best of 2.22m. — The Telegraph.
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