More gold medal joy for US

Tyson Gay picked up a third gold medal and Team USA continued to dominate in sprinting events by winning the 4x100 metres relay at the World Championships in Osaka tonight.

Gay, who already possessed the 100m and 200m gold medals, was pivotal for the Americans as they reclaimed the title lost when they were disqualified two years in Helsinki.

Gay took the baton from Wallace Spearmon and ran a perfect curve on the vital third leg.

While his handover to LeRoy Dixon was not slick, the US anchorman did just enough to hold off world record holder Asafa Powell of Jamaica.

Gay cherished this latest award, which saw him match the achievement of his hero Maurice Greene, who also bagged a full set of winner’s medals at the 1999 event.

“My goal was to produce the biggest possible lead for our last runner,” Gay said.

“Our hand-off was not the best one, so I tried to push him a little bit and cheered him to make it to the line first.

“It felt great. It is the teamwork.”

It was a thrilling close to an evening for the United States, with Brad Walker having won the pole vault and the US women claiming 4x100 relay gold.

Allyson Felix, a day after defending her 200m title, collected a second gold after running a superb second leg in the sprint relay.

Lauryn Williams handed over to Felix whose long stride devoured the rubber down the back straight.

She then handed the baton to Mikele Barber, who ran a superb bend passing to Torri Edwards – the 2003 short sprint gold medalist – who completed the task ahead of Jamaica and Belgium.

The quartet clocked a world-leading time – the seventh fastest-ever – of 41.98 seconds.

Jamaica had a season’s best 42.07secs with Belgium posting a national record of 42.75.

This year’s world leader in pole vault, Walker shared the same height of 5.86 metres alongside Romain Mesnil but beat the Frenchman on countback with Germany’s Danny Ecker vaulting 5.81m for bronze.

Both Sanya Richards and Felix were rested for the 4x400m relay semi-finals.

Like the men’s 4x400m outfit, gold medals appear to be on the cards at Sunday’s finals.

Deedee Trotter, Monique Hennagan, Mary Wineberg and Natasha Hastings dominated the race for the USA, coasting easily to victory in a world leading 3mins 23.37secs.

They finished well clear of Great Britain, who rested 400m individual champion Christine Ohuruogu.

As for the men, even without Jeremy Wariner and LaShawn Merritt who were saving energy for the final, they were even more impressive.

Berwyn Jackson, Kerron Clement, Darold Williamson and Angelo Taylor ran their legs well and finished ahead of Germany and Poland in 3:01.46.

Elsewhere, world record holder Meseret Defar won 60,000 US dollars when clinching her first world 5,000m title.

Runner-up two years ago behind fellow Ethiopian Tirunesh Dibaba, who was denied a third successive crown by a stomach bug, Defar was handed victory on a plate.

The pace was so slow, outside of 15 minutes until the last kilometre, Defar, who posted her world record of 14minutes 16.63seconds in June, was operating at jogging speed.

Defar positioned herself at the front when the bell ran, controlled the pace down the back straight and then unleashed a sizzling finish 200m out to win in 14:07.91.

The 2004 Olympic champion easily outpaced the Kenyan pair of Vivian Cheruiyot and Priscah Cherono who clocked 14:08.50 and 14:59.21 respectively.

It was the second slowest time since the distance replaced the 3,000m in the championship schedule 12 years ago.

“I had only one goal today at my third world championships and I wanted the gold medal,” said Defar, who failed to make the final on her debut four years ago in Paris.

The 23-year-old African added: “Finally I’m world champion. My tactics were to wait until the last two laps and then start my finish.

“In the last lap I controlled the situation in the first 200m and then started to kick.”

Defar, who contested her heat with a stomach upset, revealing she will defend her Olympic crown added: “I am the champion and that is great.

“In Beijing I will run the 5,000m and maybe in the future try 10,000m.”

Roman Sebrle, the Olympic champion and world record holder, finally won the world decathlon title at his sixth attempt with a flourishing finish.

The 32-year-old Czech Republic multi-eventer trailed Maurice Smith and Dmitriy Karpov overnight, the Jamaican and Russian having scores of 4,525 points and 4,439pts with his own tally at 4,434.

Sebrle gradually made inroads on the second day, the breakthrough coming when he threw 71.18m in the javelin,

Last month’s Pan American Games champion Smith – usually a strong thrower - could only manage 53.61m.

It came to a showdown in the final 1500m discipline.

Sebrle was nearly two seconds slower than Smith but close enough to clinch overall victory by 32pts with a score of 8,676, Karpov scoring 8,586 for third.

“That was a crazy competition with so many ups and downs,” said Sebrle.

“After the pole vault, I was thinking ’it will be bad’. After the javelin again ’good’.

“But I could not be sure before the 1500m, so I tried to control the race and go with Maurice and Dmitry.”

Sebrle added: “This is the toughest of all my titles.”