2008 was a landmark year in sprinting events. It was the year Usain Bolt produced his colossal breakthrough at Beijing Olympic Games, beating effortlessly the fastest men in the world and claiming the world record at the 100m final, in spite of slowing down once he had secured the victory, and also erasing from the record books the superhuman mark of 19.32 which Michael Johnson had achieved in Atlanta-96 at the 200m distance. Yet, significantly, those Olympic Games were not only the scenario of the prowess of an individual but also of the whole Jamaican team, which sensationally dominated all four pure sprinting events at stake, defeating in each occasion the USA, the traditional powerhouse of the specialty. Because of the unbelievable achievements of Lightning Bolt, the succesful defense of Veronica Campbell-Brown at the women’s 200m and even the historical swept of the whole 100m podium by Shelly-Ann Fraser, Kerron Stewart and Sherone Simpson were overshadowed. The Caribbean country went home with no less than 6 gold medals, a feat which marked the beginning of its athletic supremacy.
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| Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake at the 2012 Olympic Games 200m final Harry How/ Getty Images Europe www.zimbio.com |
2008 was a landmark year in sprinting events. It was the year Usain Bolt produced his colossal breakthrough at Beijing Olympic Games, beating effortlessly the fastest men in the world and claiming the world record at the 100m final, in spite of slowing down once he had secured the victory, and also erasing from the record books the superhuman mark of 19.32 which Michael Johnson had achieved in Atlanta-96 at the 200m distance. Yet, significantly, those Olympic Games were not only the scenario of the prowess of an individual but also of the whole Jamaican team, which sensationally dominated all four pure sprinting events at stake, defeating in each occasion the USA, the traditional powerhouse of the specialty. Because of the unbelievable achievements of Lightning Bolt, the succesful defense of Veronica Campbell-Brown at the women’s 200m and even the historical swept of the whole 100m podium by Shelly-Ann Fraser, Kerron Stewart and Sherone Simpson were overshadowed. The Caribbean country went home with no less than 6 gold medals, a feat which marked the beginning of its athletic supremacy.
After
such groundbreaking demonstration, the question was if Jamaica would be able of
keeping its sprinting stardom all along the new Olympic cycle, or, on the
contrary, the rest of the world, specially the well-defeated North Americans,
would put the means to face Bolt and company and strike back. Four years later,
the answer is Jamaica continues dominating the most emblematic athletic event,
the 100m, and also remains at the top at the other sprint distance, the 200m.
Only the fabulous Allyson Felix, with her victory at the latter event, avoided
a new swept of the gold medals by their Caribbean neighbours at the 2012 London
Olympic Games. Bolt defended majestically both individual titles and also the one at
the 4x100m relay, and so did Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce. If in Beijing we had seen
a clean swept of the female’s 100m podium, in London, Bolt, his dolphin Yohan
Blake and newcomer Warren Weir got all the medals at the male’s 200m
final.
Four
years ago, Jamaica dominated in quality, in medal number, while The United
States still had the consolation of its superior depth. However, by 2012,
Jamaica has considerably reduced this gap to the point they have almost matched
their archrivals, at least in the men’s side. Between 2005-2008, USA’s 23 male
representatives at the top-50 scored 696 points at the 100m, against the 347
points amassed by the 6 Jamaican athletes ranked. Now between 2009-2012, USA
just wins 597 to 526, with Jamaica doubling up the number of top-50 athletes
from 6 to  |
| Kerron Stewart, Shelly-Ann Fraser and Carmelita Jeter competing in Zurich in 2009 Jamie McDonald/ Getty Images Europe www.zimbio.com |
It is important to understand too that in Jamaica, as in Kenya or Ethiopia, track and field is the king of sports. Every kid dreams of escaping a tough life to become the new Usain Bolt. Besides, and unlike in Kenya or Ethiopia, because of more than 100 years of experience, there is a well established organisation of track and field. Let us say no public or private sector in the life of the country works better than athletics. There is not anywhere in the world an sportive event as Champs, which has been staged for over a century to make compete the high school boys and girls of all the country under an enthusiastic crowd of 30.000 spectators. Participating in Champs and getting used since young age to challenging competition and huge pressure is arguably the most important reason behind Jamaican athletic success. It is the same for those like Bolt or Blake who set records at Champs or those like Veronica Campbell and Shelly-Ann Fraser who struggled to make a name for themselves there. All of them learned a good lesson at Champs. Often the inability of Asafa Powell to face the pressure of a major championship is explained for his lack of experience at Champs: he belonged to a small school and only once got the opportunity to participate in the most renowned high school track and field event in the world. http://moti-athletics-200-w.blogspot.com.es/
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| Allyson Felix competing in Berlin at the 2009 World Championships, where she got her third straight title in a row Stu Forster/ Getty Images Europe www.zimbio.com |
Allyson Felix and
Veronica Campbell-Brown may well be two of the best ever female sprinters in modern
history of track and field, for both their outstanding performances and their
longevity, their capacity to remain at the top for nearly a decade. It is a
case similar to Tirunesh Dibaba, Meseret Defar and Vivian Cheruiyot in long
distance running. Allyson Felix and Veronica Campbell were already track stars
since they were in their teens: Allyson had run the 200m distance in 22.11 when
she was still in high school, while Veronica, three years her elder, had
effortlessly become World youth and World junior champion succesively. The come
of age for both athletes came at the 2004 Olympic Games final in Athens, where they
clashed for the first time. Campbell won narrowly that race over 18-year-old
Felix. Since then and up to date, either the Jamaican or the USA athlete have
triumphed in every major championship over the 200m distance in highly exciting
alternatives. Allyson crowned herself in Helsinki-2005 and defended two years later in
Osaka with a remarkable 21.81 PB, to gap
Veronica in half-a-second but the Jamaican bounced back the following year in
Beijing to complete the distance in the best time in the decade (21.74) and
thus beat her long time archrival and defend her Olympic title. One year later
at Berlin World Championships it was again Allyson Felix turn. The USA great
won the gold medal quite easily in 22.02 over Campbell- Brown and Bahamian Debbie
Ferguson McKenzie. Thus Allyson Felix became the first woman in winning three world
sprint titles and besides all of them in a row.
The 2009 World
Championships were highly succesful for big veterans Debbie Ferguson (33 years)
and Chandra Sturrup (almost 38), the last survivors of the outstanding Bahamian
generation which won the 4x100m relay titles at the 1999 World Champs and the
2000 Olympics. And precisely, Ferguson-McKenzie was the penultimate 200m World
champion back in 2001, before the rising of the Felix-Campbell dinasty, and
still had the strenght 8 years afterwards to challenge the youngsters. Both
Ferguson and Sturrup made also the 100m final and obtained an extraordinary
silver medal at the 4x100m relay. Yet nothing can surprise us anymore about age,
when a 52-year-old Merlene Ottey was still trying to qualify with the Slovenian
relay for major competitions by 2012. However the fact that still the aged
Ferguson and Sturrup continued leading Bahamian sprinters in 2009, with no
other athlete of the country on the horizon meant much of a crisis. Fortunately
the near future looks now quite promising for the Caribbean country because the
two most outstanding youngsters currently in the area happen to be two Bahamian
athletes: Antonique Strachan and Shaunae Miller, both World junior champions
and Carifta Games big stars.
Shelly-Ann Fraser
took the world by surprise when she won the 100m Olympic final in Beijing,
thanks to her cannonball-like outburst from the blocks, leading an all-Jamaican
podium, along with Kerron Stewart and Sherone Simpson. Then journalists
discovered that almost unknown Jamaican youngster athlete, who had eliminated
Veronica Campbell-Brown at the national Olympic trials, was a true fighter who
had overcome very difficult upbringings in one of the toughest Kingston
neighborhoods to become a world class athlete and also the first person in her
family with a college degree. http://moti-athletics-100-w.blogspot.fr/2012/02/one-thousand-reasons.html Yet as hard as it was to get to the top, it was
even more difficult to keep it. The following year, for the World Championships
in Berlin, Shelly was not even the favourite. She had suffered from
appendicitis and had not been fitted enough during the year. On the other hand,
her compatriot and double Olympic medallist in Beijing, Kerron Stewart, was in
outstanding form. Indeed, only three weeks before Worlds she had run the
distance in a sensational 10.75 at the Golden Gala, defeating handily the
Olympic champion.
Notwithstanding, as we know, Shelly-Ann Fraser was born for
big challenges. In the decisive race, Shelly went out like a rocket, taking
some decisive metres over the field. She faded some in the end while Kerron was
progressing and closing the gap but Fraser still held off to win 10.73 to 10.75
of her mate. In the process she had broken Merlene Ottey’s national record. Making
up for not qualifying for the Olympic Games, US Carmelita Jeter grabbed the
bronze, leaving respective defending and former champions Veronica Campbell and Lauryn
Williams out of the podium. For Williams and Muna Lee, 4th at the
200m, two of the most talented athletes of their generation it was their last
participation in a major contest, due to persistent injury issues. After a
rather dissapointing championship for her, the double Olympic gold medallist
Veronica Campbell declined to participate in the relay. In a contest where both
male and female US 4x100m squads failed to finish, Jamaica enjoyed the occasion
to win gold with a team formed by Fraser, Stewart, Simone Facey and Aleen
Bailey, ahead of the Bahamas and Germany, which, anchored by Verena Sailer,
left the Beijing Olympic champion Russian quartet without a medal.
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| Michelle-Lee Ahye, one of the best in the new generation of female sprinters from Trinidad and Tobago Michael Steele/ Getty Images Europe www.zimbio.com |
2010 was the year of
Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce’s absurd positive for the ingestion of a toothache
painkiller in the eve of a Diamond League meeting, which let the Jamaican out
for six months. Without her main rival, Carmelita Jeter was the comfortable
dominator of the season. Notwithstanding, Veronica Campbell-Brown made clear
she was not done yet: Firstly, she won the 60m gold during the winter at the
World indoor Championships, a title she would defend two years later. Then
during the summer she defeated both Jeter in Eugene and Felix in New York. The
marks obtained in those races allowed her to lead the rankings in both 100m
(10.78) and 200m (21.98). Third at the 100m stood former Louisiana State
student and NCAA champion Kelly-Ann Baptiste, who had steadily progressed to
10.84 to become one of the best sprinters in the world. Kelly-Ann won at the
inaugural edition of the Continental Cup that year. If the Bahamas have been
struggling to keep being a sprinting powerhouse, Trinidad and Tobago’s women
are quickly approching the awesome level which male sprinters in the country
have had for decades. It is a pity 400m hurdler Josanne Lucas could not keep
her 2009 form, when she won the bronze medal at Worlds. Nevertheless, Baptiste
is leading an awesome young generation of sprinters: Semoy Hackett and Kai
Selvon, who have grown as athletes in USA Colleges (LSU and Auburn
respectively) and Michelle-Lee Ahye, a three times Carifta gold medallist. Hackett
was an Olympic finalist at the 200m and all four together have formed a
fearsome 4x100m relay (though unlucky in Daegu and London major competitions).
They all have a great future ahead of them.
In a year with no
global competitions, athletes focused in Area championships and we had some
interesting results in some of them. Veteran Cydonie Mothersill, a multiple
World and Olympic finalist was still going strong enough to win for Cayman
Islands the 200m gold medal at the Central American Games and also at the
Commonwealth. Chisato Fukushima lowered the Japanese sprint records to 11.21
and 22.89 and won the gold medal at both events at the Asian Games. However, she
could not get a third victory because her team, who had accomplished a huge
record at the 4x100m the year before, was sensationally beaten by Thailand, in
the swan song of an historical quartet, Olympic in Beijing. African
Championships had also much to offer. Blessing Okagbare was well known as the
Nigerian student at a US college who had upset the field at the Olympic Games,
taking a surprise bronze medal at the long jump. Now she had also specialised
at the 100m with remarkable success, collecting the same year four NCAA titles
among jump and sprint events. In her breakthrough year she ran 11.03 in Nairobi to defeat
the number one sprinter in the continent, her compatriot Oludamola Osayomi, who
got just bronze. Another quickly improving African athlete, Gabon’s Ruddy Zhang
Milama, who had medalled at the World Indoors that same winter, splitted the
Nigerians. In amazing alternatives, Osayomi would get revenge at the African
Games the following year and Milama would win at the new edition of the African
Champs in 2012, relegating in both occasions Okagbare to silver. Yet the
athlete who would truly rivalized at global level with Okagbare was the US
based athlete from Ivory Coast, Murielle Ahouré, whose breaktrough came in the
Olympic year.
In recent years, we had
assisted to a crisis in European female sprinting. Kim Gevaert and an aged
Christine Arron were the only athletes in the continent who could really face
the best in the world. After the Belgian ace retirement, European fans were
wondering about the future in the sector. Yet the European Championships in
Barcelona offered amazing and optimistic results. Verena Sailer, who had won
bronze in Berlin at the 4x100m the year before, claimed the vacant spot of
Gevaert, in a good mark of 11.10, just narrowly holding off French Véronique
Mang and Myriam Soumaré and another promising athlete who was going to do well
in the years to come: Ezinne Okparaebo from Norway. Sailer was the first German
female who claimed an European sprint title since Katrin Krabbe’s victories in
1990. The 200m final was even more exciting. The European leader and big
favourite Aleksandra Fedoriva was well beaten by Myriam Soumaré and the Ukrainian
girl who had won at the European team Championships, Yelizaveta Bryzhina. Afterwards,
the dissapointed 4x100m Olympic champion would get some consolation with her
victory at the Continental Cup in September.
Soumaré had been
convinced by mates and coach that she had a huge talent for athletics so
finally she had taken training seriously. The result was an improvement on his
PB from 23.01 to the 22.32! she ran in Barcelona to win. All seven athletes who
finished the race completed the distance in less than 22.70. It was the best
depth we had seen in many years at the Championships and, interestingly, far
better that what Berlin Worlds had offered. Nevertheless the most intriguing
sprint final in Barcelona was after all the 4x100m relay. A young and unheralded
Ukrainian team, from which we only knew one of the four girls was the daughter
of former Olympic champion Olga Wladykina, ran an outstanding race and it was
precisely that daughter of Wladykina and Viktor Bryzgin who ate up Polish
anchor Weronika Wedler down the homestretch and held off the surge of French
European record holder Christine Arron to take the gold medal in 42.29, a huge
national record and the best winning time in the championships in 20 years. Every
member of the relay was very fast and played her part to perfection but what
really stood out in the Ukrainian team performance was the synchronisation
among the girls, the flawless turnovers: as Povh delivers to Pohrebnyak, this
one is already in full speed, and the exchange between Ryemyen and anchor
Bryzhina is so perfect you do not even realise the baton changes hands. Then it
was revealed that in similar fashion to old East German teams, those athletes
had been working together in their relay for years. It explains the different
result between them and the almost improvised USA squads for major
championships. http://www.moti-athletics-4x1-w.blogspot.fr/2011/07/whats-up-with-ukrainian-girls.html
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| Ivet Lalova wins the 2012 European Championships ahead of Olesya Povh and Ezinne Okparaebo Ian Walton/ Getty Images Europe www.zimbio.com |
Ukrainian sprinters
continued making a name of themselves in 2011. Olesya Povh remained unbeaten
all the winter, culminating her flawless campaign with her 60m gold medal at the
European Indoor Champs, in a race Mariya Ryemyen got silver and a third
compatriot, Hrystyna Stuy almost completed an all-Ukrainian podium. Yet, during
the summer, it was precisely their less fancied sprinter, Stuy, who
surprisingly made the 200m final at the World Championships in Daegu. Besides, The
4x100m team obtained an announced bronze medal, in a race where the US team of
Bianca Knight, Allyson Felix, Marshevet Myers and Carmelita Jeter recovered the
title against defending champions Jamaica. By 2012 Ukraine had such incredible
depth in the 200m event that Ryemyen and Stuy had to win gold and silver at the
European Championships in Helsinki, beating the young Pyatachenko and defending
champion Myriam Soumaré on the way, to be able to join Bryzhina at the Olympic
Games. Nevertheless the European athlete who truly made the highlights during
those years was Ivet Lalova. The Bulgarian ace who once ran the 100m in 10.77,
still the second best European mark ever, and finished 4th at the
100m and 5th at the 200m at the 2004 Olympic Games at 20 years of
age, had seen her promising athletic career cut short when she broke her femur
while warming up in a meeting the following year. Doctors said Lalova would
never be able to practise sport elite anymore but she refused to give up.
During six difficult years of up and downs she went to hospital up to seven
times to undergo knee surgery. Yet eventually Ivet’s struggles got their
reward: by 2011 the Bulgarian sprinter seemed miraculously recovered. She won
at the Bislett Games and broke again the 11 seconds barrier at the Balkan
Games. Almost living in a dream, Lalova got to make the 100m final at Worlds in
Daegu and the next year was crowned European champion in Helsinki, beating the
best 100m specialists in the continent as Olesya Povh and Verena Sailer. http://moti-athletics-100-w.blogspot.fr/2012/07/nellum-lalova-long-way-to-olympics.html
The defending 100m
world and Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser had a brilliant starting for her
2011 campaign, winning at the Jamaica Invitational at the 200m distance in a
slightly windy 22.10, beating handily Veronica Campbell. However, small
injuries slowed her preparation. She was not totally fitted for Daegu Worlds
and could only handle a fourth place at the final. On the other hand, Allyson
Felix tested her chances of emulating Valerie Brisco-Hooks’ legendary double
Olympic victory in Los Angeles-84 at the 200m-400m distances. It proved too
risky for the three times defending champion as it had been announced months
before by specialists as Track and Field News. Pushed to the limits and
eventually defeated by Amantle Montso at the 400m, Allyson was not fresh enough
for the 200m final and so ended up in bronze medal position, in 22.42, a
performance which, wind or no wind, is her worst ever in a major contest. And
in the end, for someone like her, to come back home with a silver and a bronze
means a failure. The big winners in Daegu were instead Carmelita Jeter and
Veronica Campbell-Brown. Jeter kept her momentum to win her first major
competition. She was in stellar form the whole year, clocking 10.70 at Prefontaine,
10.74 at nationals and 10.78 at the Ivo Van Damme meeting. Against a strong
headwind, she was also the best in Daegu, winning gold in 10.90, ahead of
Veronica Campbell-Brown. It was also the confirmation of Kelly-Ann Baptiste
with her bronze medal as one of the best sprinters in the world, the same than
Okagbare, who crossed the line in a praiseworthy 5th place. On the other hand, Kerron
Stewart was only 6th and Marshevet Hooker-Myers, who had clocked
10.86 at the national trials, ended up in a dissapointing last position. At the
200m, Veronica Campbell swapped placements with Jeter, to win the title she
lacked in her outstanding résumé in 22.22. The United States obtained second,
third and fourth places with Jeter, Felix and Shalonda Salomon respectively.
For the first time
in several seasons, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce was free from
injuries or another kind of setbacks to prepare the Olympic Games, but how could she beat such a strong
athlete as Jeter? Shelly used to kill the races in the first 20 metres but her
archrival outburst was nearly as good as hers and Jeter was much more powerful
in the end. Even mentally, it was not easy to strike back after 8 straight defeats against the gold medallist in Daegu. The solution was maybe to work on
the weakest point of Shelly-Ann as a sprinter: if she wanted to defend her
Olympic title she could not fade in the end of the race. The girl from
Waterhouse used to hate the 200m event but Stephen Francis convinced her to
also run that distance during the year to increase her speed endurance. It
seemed to work out: at the Jamaican trials, Fraser came in the shape of her
life, winning impressively both the 100m and 200m, setting a new national
record at the former distance (10.70) and accomplishing a new PB at the latter
(22.10). Veronica Campbell-Brown qualified in both races for London as well
while Kerron Stewart achieved it at the 100m and Sherone Simpson at the
200m. On the other hand, all the United
States sprinting stars planned doubling up as well: Allyson Felix had a more
reasonable choice this time (100m-200m), Carmelita Jeter was doing the same
distances while Sanya Richard-Ross would try a 200m-400m double. With Jeter and
Felix winning the finals, the latter in a groundbreaking 21.69 PB, all three accomplished
their double target and it left a lone spot vacant for the Olympic team in
sprints which claimed Tianna Madison, another athlete with a quite strange
track and field career progression: Tianna had jumped 6.89 to win the long jump
world title in 2005 in
Helsinki aged 19, following up this success with a silver medal at the World indoors
the next winter. Since then however she was unable to go further than 6.60 in her whole jumping
career. Then she gave up and decided to try to be a world level sprinting,
accomplishing once a good mark of 11.05 in 2009 but not doing better than 11.20
afterwards... until 2012. The former long jump star was in stellar form during
the winter, running the 60m event in 7.02 and in the end winning a bronze medal
at the World indoors in Istanbul. Then she kept her momentum all over the
summer, going to the Olympics, where she performed brilliantly to lower her PB to
10.85.
With no less than three US super stars running two events, the rest of the
field had little chances of doing the American team. It affected experienced
runners as Alex Anderson, Lashauntea Moore or Shalonda Solomon. Also Bianca
Knight who had redshirted her whole college track and field career to become
the new Allyson Felix and still had to make her first all-American team.
Finally standout collegian runners as English Gardner who had set a new area
junior record in 2011, being just a freshman in Oregon; Kimberlyn Duncan who
had won in the last two years all four NCAA titles at stake at the 200m for LSU
and whose PB was already 22.19; and Jeneba Tarmoh, who defending the colours of
Texas A&M had clashed with Duncan in outstanding finals and had also been a
100m world junior champion back in 2008. http://moti-athletics-200-w.blogspot.com.es/2011/08/who-is-in-college-now.html Actually Tarmoh was
initially given third at the 100m final but the officials rectified and ruled a
controversial draw between her and Allyson Felix. A tiebreaker race was set but
Tarmoh refused to run it.
That constellation
of stars coming from Jamaica and United States made also specially tough to
reach the sprint finals. 100m European champion Ivet Lalova, European leaders
Verena Sailer (11.05) and Aleksandra Fedoriva (22.16), all three 200m Ukrainian
standouts, Caribbean veteran Laverne Jones and Caribbean hope Antonique
Strachan, and even silver medallists in Beijing Sherone Simpson and Kerron
Stewart, all failed to reach the decisive races. To do it, it was necessary to
run in 11.01! and 22.56! On the other hand, five women qualified for both finals:
Fraser, Campbell-Brown, Felix, Jeter and the revelation of the year, running
for Ivory Coast, Murielle Ahouré, silver medallist at the 60m event at the
World Indoors in Istanbul and winner at three Diamond League meetings,
including an upset to Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser at the Golden Gala. With
also Madison, Baptiste and Okagbare making the cut at the 100m and Richard-Ross
and Hackett at the 200m, the only finalist not American-based was French 2010
European champion Myriam Soumaré, because also African athletes Okagbare and
Ahouré had grown as elite athletes in the American collegiate system.
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| Murielle Ahouré, a double Olympic medallist for Ivory Coast Stu Forster/ Getty Images Europe www.zimbio.com |
Shelly-Ann
Fraser-Pryce won a thrilling 100m final in 10.75 over Jeter (10.78) and
Campbell-Brown (10.81) to defend her Olympic title, becoming only the third
woman in doing so. Also Madison and Felix dipped under 10.90 in a high quality
race. The dissapointment came from Kelly-Ann Baptiste (6th) and specially
Blessing Okagbare, who finished in the last place of the race, after having won
her heat and semi-final. Interestingly, Shelly was not the fastest out of the
blocks, in fact there were several women ahead of her mid-race. It was with 20-30 metres remaining that
she took the lead and did not relinquish it until the end. The Jamaican
pocket-rocket was powerful the same down the homestretch at the 200m, making a
serious claim to get an unexpected sprint double but Allyson Felix came from
behind like a meteor to eventually win her first individual Olympic gold. Felix
clocked 21.88 to 22.09 of Fraser, with Jeter winning her second medal of the
Games in 22.14. The defending champion Veronica Campbell, who had focused her
preparation for the 100m (the title she had never won) just could hold Sanya
Richards for 4th place.
The United States,
with Madison, Felix, Bianca Knight and Jeter, won the 4x100m relay in 40.82 in what was perhaps
the performance of the Games. The US quartet demolished by more than
half-a-second a world record which had belonged to the German Democratic
Republic for 27 years. Jamaica with the same squad (Fraser, Simpson, Campbell,
Stewart) that ran in Beijing 4 years before, won the silver in a national
record, only four hundredths slower than the former universal mark (41.41).
Ukraine, who had unexpectedly failed to finish at the recent European
Championships, won confortably here the bronze also in a national record
(42.04). In the best race ever, all the other finalists dipped under 43
seconds: Nigeria anchored by Okagbare, the European champion Germany, The
Netherlands, with the youngest team in the contest, led by World junior
medallists Dafne Schippers and Jamile Samuel, and Brazil, with both Pan
American individual champions, Ana Claudia Silva and Rosangela Santos. Trinidad
and Tobago, which had clocked 42.31
in semi-finals, unfortunately did not finish the race.
Defending champion Russia did not make the final. Besides, the 100m was the
only female event where this country did not place any runner into the top-50. France,
the Bahamas and Colombia, winner of three area championships during this
Olympic cycle, did not run the final either. Belgium, without Kim Gevaert, did
not qualify for the Olympics and neither did Australia, in spite of the efforts
of Sally Pearson, and the host country, Great Britain, which missed her
promising sprinter Jodie Williams, out for injury.
| Women100m | Women200m | Women4x100m | ||||||||
1
|
Shelly-Ann Fraser
|
JAM
|
1
|
Allyson Felix
|
USA
|
1
|
United States
|
USA
| ||
2
|
Carmelita Jeter
|
USA
|
2
|
Veronica Campbell
|
JAM
|
2
|
Jamaica
|
JAM
| ||
3
|
Veronica Campbell
|
JAM
|
3
|
Carmelita Jeter
|
USA
|
3
|
Ukraine
|
UKR
| ||
4
|
Kelly-Ann Baptiste
|
TRI
|
4
|
Sanya Richards
|
USA
|
4
|
Germany
|
GER
| ||
5
|
Kerron Stewart
|
JAM
|
5
|
Shelly-Ann Fraser
|
JAM
|
5
|
Nigeria
|
NGR
| ||
6
|
Blessing Okagbare
|
NGR
|
6
|
Shalonda Solomon
|
USA
|
6
|
Russia
|
RUS
| ||
7
|
Tianna Madison
|
USA
|
7
|
Debbie Ferguson
|
BAH
|
7
|
Brazil
|
BRA
| ||
8
|
Allyson Felix
|
USA
|
8
|
Kimberlyn Duncan
|
USA
|
8
|
France
|
FRA
| ||
9
|
Murielle Ahouré
|
CIV
|
9
|
Jeneba Tarmoh
|
USA
|
9
|
Trinidad & Tobago
|
TRI
| ||
10
|
Marshevet Myers
|
USA
|
10
|
Bianca Knight
|
USA
|
10
|
Bahamas
|
BAH
| ||
11
|
Sherone Simpson
|
JAM
|
11
|
Myriam Soumaré
|
FRA
|
11
|
Netherlands
|
NED
| ||
12
|
Ivet Lalova
|
BUL
|
12
|
Murielle Ahouré
|
CIV
|
12
|
Poland
|
POL
| ||
13
|
Alex Anderson
|
USA
|
13
|
Aleksandra Fedoriva
|
RUS
|
13
|
Colombia
|
COL
| ||
14
|
Ruddy Zhang Milama
|
GAB
|
14
|
Sherone Simpson
|
JAM
|
14
|
Belarus
|
BLR
| ||
15
|
Debbie Ferguson
|
BAH
|
15
|
Anneisha McLaughlin
|
JAM
|
15
|
Japan
|
JPN
| ||
16
|
Aleen Bailey
|
JAM
|
16
|
Kerron Stewart
|
JAM
|
16
|
Great Britain
|
GBR
| ||
17
|
Lauryn Williams
|
USA
|
17
|
Porscha Lucas
|
USA
|
17
|
Switzerland
|
SUI
| ||
18
|
Schillonie Calvert
|
JAM
|
18
|
Mariya Ryemyen
|
UKR
|
18
|
Belgium
|
BEL
| ||
19
|
Chandra Sturrup
|
BAH
|
19
|
Yelizaveta Bryzhina
|
UKR
|
19
|
Australia
|
AUS
| ||
20
|
Shalonda Salomon
|
USA
|
20
|
Charonda Williams
|
USA
|
20
|
Italy
|
ITA
|
Women100m Women200m Women4x100m
Check out the whole TOP-50 RANKINGS and complete STATISTICS for every event above/*
