Marlon motors to 200m victory in Athens

MARLON DEVONISH posted a season’s best time in winning the 200 metres at last night’s IAAF Super Grand Prix meeting in Athens.

The 30-year-old Coventry sprinter clocked a time of 20.53 seconds to score what was a welcome victory ahead of Panagiotis Sarris and Ioannis Tzogas.

The Greek pair never troubled Devonish, who was a late entry for the event after earlier exceeding all expectations in finishing fifth in the 100m final.

Despite the withdrawal of joint-world record holder Justin Gatlin, who captured his Olympic gold medal on the same track almost two years ago, the big guns were still in evidence.

After breezing through his heat in a windy 10.16seconds, the Olympic 4x100m gold medallist produced another solid showing in the final, clocking 10.21sec, albeit failing to match the pace of winner Francis Obikwelu.

The Portuguese, who took silver behind Gatlin in the Olympic final, moved into top gear in the second half of the race to win by a metre in a time of 10.03sec ahead of Marc Burns from Trinidad and Tobago who edged American Jason Smoots in a photo-finish, with both sharing the time of 10.13sec.

Helen Clitheroe, Lisa Dobriskey and Hayley Tullett made no impression in their 1500m race that was comfortably won by Yelena Soboleva, despite the failure of the electronic timing.

The Russian was hand-timed at three minutes 51.8sec, with the trio of Brits a long way adrift in a large field of 20 runners.

Tullett, in her retirement season, was ninth in 4:01.3; Commonwealth champion Dobriskey finished 13th with 4:02.4, with Clitheroe a further four places back in 4:05.3.

Derval O’Rourke continued her comeback from injury by finishing fifth in the 100m hurdles, which was won by Kirsten Blom of Germany in 12.69sec. O’Rourke, who was an unexpected winner of the IAAF World Indoor 60m hurdles title in March, has been struggling somewhat to regain full fitness since her Moscow success.

But after a poor start, the Cork woman came through powerfully in the closing stages to finish in a time of 13.02sec.

Hattie Dean set a personal 3000m steeplechase best of 9:51.12 in finishing 10th, while Ireland’s Roisin McGettigan set a season’s best of 9:55.22, albeit trailing behind Poland’s Wioletta Janowska whose time of 9:17.15 was not only a national record, but also the fastest time in the world this year.