White turns on style to claim sprint double

KELLI WHITE of the United States became the first woman since East Germany’s Katrin Krabbe in 1991 to clinch the world championship sprint double when she won the women’s 200 metres title in Paris last night.

The 26-year-old won in a world leading time for the season of 22.05sec to beat Anastasiya Kapachinskaya of Russia while Torri Edwards of the United States took the bronze to add to the silver she won in the 100m.

"It was a great field and very tough," said White, who took bronze in the 2001 final. "I am happy but I'm just really really tired as it's my eighth race of the championships."

There was disappointment for the hosts as European champion Muriel Hurtis faded into fourth in the last 20 metres while the 1997 world champion Zhanna Block of the Ukraine was never in it and finished fifth.

Ethiopia's Kenenisa Bekele and Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco kept their hopes alive of a golden world championship double as both progressed safely to Sunday's 5000m final. Bekele, the 10,000m champion, won his heat while El Guerrouj running less than 24 hours after winning his fourth successive 1,500m crown led into the straight before relaxing as he was assured of qualifying and finished fourth behind Ethiopian Gebre-ezaghe Gebremariam.

El Guerrouj admitted that had the schedule seen the 5000 run before the 1500, then he might not have attempted the double. He said: "It would have been harder because going in reverse you lose a lot of speed, but this way round is better.

"I can assure everyone I'm not doing this for the sake of the ticket sales or for the spectators but because I believe I can do it and I must as that is what I want to do in the Olympics. I'll need to rest a lot now because last night I only had three-and-a-half hours sleep and if I'm to pose a champion's challenge on Sunday I'll need a lot more than that."

Newly crowned world 400m champion Jerome Young said yesterday he was not concerned about the revelations in the Los Angeles Times he had won a gold medal at the 2000 Olympics despite having failed a drugs test prior to them. The American, 27, was allowed to run in Sydney after he was cleared on appeal by an internal inquiry following his testing positive for nandrolone in 1999 and won gold in the 4x400m relay having run in a heat. Olympic and track and field officials were dissatisfied they had not been informed but Young said: "It doesn't bother me. I just want to put it all behind me. Only the media are talking about it. I don't want to talk about it and I'm just here to enjoy the world championships."

Meanwhile, Ireland's Peter Coghlan walked away from the first round heats of the 110m hurdles last night shaking his head in disbelief. On a night when he had done everything right he ended up last behind defending champion, Allen Johnson in a dismally disappointing 13.90 secs which left him in a very unaccustomed position deep at the wrong end of the summary sheet.

"It's hard to pin it down but that's been my whole season," he said. "It is one of those things.

"It's timing and rhythm. The timing is just not there and you just can't fake the timing in the hurdles. When it's off it is well off as you can see out there."

Coghlan got off to the perfect start ­ a .154 reaction time was second fastest by just .001 of a second ­ but things went out of control after that.

"I was very up for it. I was very focused. It's funny in a way to run such a slow time but I really feel right now there was not a huge amount more I could have done. Time-wise it seems ridiculous . I feel like I could run a 13.5 right now but it is kind of hard to figure out where it would come from because, to be honest, I did not do a lot of things wrong in that race."

Guiseppe Gibilisco of Italy won the men's pole vault title at the World Championships, clearing a national record of 5.90 metres. South Africa's Okkert Brits won the silver with a clearance at 5.85m.