Susanthika's Osaka Stadium record to be broken?

Kenyan Luke Kibet wins first gold in marathon

Dinesh Weerawansa reporting from Japan

ATHLETICS: Osaka, Japan Aug. 25 - Sri Lanka sprint queen Susanthika Jayasinghe's women's 200m ground record at Nagai Stadium here is expected to be broken during the 11th IAAF World Championship which began here today.

Olympic gold medallist Marion Jones of the USA and Jayasinghe of Sri Lanka holds the women's 100m and 200m ground records respectively. Jones accounted for the best timing here in 1998, clocking 10.97 seconds.

Jayasinghe is the current women's 200m ground record holder at Nagai Stadium, the venue for the 203-nation World Championship which began here with a spectacular opening ceremony. Jayasinghe's timing of 22.63 seconds to win IAAF Japan Grand Prix on May 12, 2001 still stands as the best ever performance by a women's 200m sprinter at this ground, which was built way back in 1964.

Nagai Stadium at Nagai Park is just nine kilometres away from the Athletes Village in Osaka. It is one of the largest stadia in Japan. Nagai Stadium hosts the annual IAAF Japan Grand Prix every May and it's at one of those meets in 2001 that Jayasinghe accounted for the record. However, Jayasinghe's women's 200m record timing at this 43-year-old stadium would well be erased during the week to come.

Holding the men's 100m and 200m ground records at Nagai Stadium are American Maurice Green (9.91 seconds in 2000) and Namibian Frankie Fredericks (19.87 in 1999) respectively.

Jayasinghe will be amongst the cream of world class women who will come under the starter's orders for the women's 100m first round heats to be worked off from 11.40 a.m. local time (8.10 a.m. SL time) on Sunday (26).

If the 31-year-old Sydney Olympic medallist qualifies to the next round, she could run in women's 100m quarter finals scheduled for the same night at 8.35 pm (5.10 p.m. SL time on Sunday).

"I can't predict what would happen. All what I could say right now is that I am in good shape. I have faith in my talent and am confident that I could do something. It's not an easy task but I am confident that I could make everybody feel my presence here," a confident Jayasinghe said after her second workout this afternoon.

For bragging rights as the 'world's fastest woman', two names emerge from the list of challengers - American champion Torri Edwards (10.90 seconds), undefeated in six straight races; and Olympic bronze medallist Veronica Campbell, the world leader (10.89 seconds) with three sub-11 performances to her credit. Only a one hundredth of a second separate the two and it would be interesting to see what they have to offer here in Osaka.

Jayasinghe will run in the first of the eight women's 100m heats. She will run in lane four, flanked by Bulgarian Inna Eftimova and Fatou Tiyana (GAU). Of the eight sprinters drawn to Heat one, American Carmelita Jeter has the fastest 2007 timing of 11.05 seconds.

Jamaican Veronica Campbell will run in heat two along with Laura Turner of Great Britain. Campbell's main rival - Torri Edwards (USA) will run in last of the eight women's 100m heats.

Meanwhile, Kenyan Luke Kibet accounted for the first gold medal of the 11th IAAF World Championship. He returned a timing of two hours, 15 minutes and 59 seconds to spring the first surprise. By the 20km mark, the 24-year-old Kenyan was in the tenth place but he kept his cool and had a calculated run to emerge easy winner at the end to pull off a shock win..

He turned all that on its head within the space of a few hundred metres after the 31k mark in the hot and humid Osaka weather that threaten to prevail throughout the ten days of competition. "I heard that people were saying we were not strong. But when I came here, I promised myself that I would do well, to prove them wrong," the new marathon gold medallist said.

Kibet left the pack well behind when he started a surge that would last for over 10km, running a marginally faster second half (by 20 seconds), and winning by well over a minute, in 2:15:59. True that the timing was the slowest race in the 24-year-old World Championship history. But, given that the event began at seven o'clock in the morning in 28 C heat, and 81% humidity, and ended in 33 C heat, with 67% humidity, that is hardly surprising.

This is by far the biggest win of Kibet's career, which began at the turn of the century in his home town of Eldoret, the heartland of Kenyan athletics, at some 2,000m altitude in the Western Highlands of the Great Rift Valley.

But the biggest disappointment was the Japanese, the hosts. Though the host nation expected to dominate in their pet event, three of their five leading long distance runners secured only fifth to seventh places - Tsuyoshi Ogata, Sathoshi Osaki and Toshinari Suwa respectively.

In contrast, Mubarak Hassan Shami, an adopted Quatrain who originally ran for Kenya under his original name of Richard Yatich, did well to clock 2:17.18 to secure the silver.

The hot favourites for the fastest man of the championship title - Jamaican Asafa Powell and American Tyson Gay settled for second places in their respective men's 100m heats. Gay (10.19 seconds) came behind Japan's Nobuharu Ashara (10.14) in heat one while Powell (10.34) finished heat six after Trinidadian Kleston Bledmon (10.29).

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