g*y wins 100m in Croatia while Croatian athletes give crowd reason to cheer
American sprinter Tyson g*y was looking forward to a chance to set a new world record yesterday at the IAAF World Challenge in Zagreb, Croatia, and Nesta Carter of Jamaica was looking forward to beating g*y. Both will have to wait for the next race to see their hopes come to fruition after slight contact between their hands prevented either from running the best they could.
"I expected a better time," said g*y, who then admitted the contact was his fault. "I have to apologise to Nesta Carter."
As it is with sprinters at this level the contact did little to throw them off that a spectator might notice, but the clock noticed. g*y’s personal best is 9.69 seconds, and Carter set his personal best time earlier this season when he ran the 100m in 9.78 in Rieti. Yesterday’s collision caused g*y to drop his time to 9.92 while Carter finished with a time of 10.07, they still managed to take the top two spots. American Michael Rodgers took third with a time of 10.14.
Two Croatians gave the home crowd much to cheer about as Sandra Perkovic set a meet record in her first discus-throw, and Blanka Vlasic won the high jump with a jump of 2.02 metres.
Perkovic, the 2009 European Junior champion, and the 2010 European Athletics champion, won with a distance of 65.56m, over two metres further then second place finisher Yanfeng Li of China, who threw for a distance of 63.35m. Dragana Tomasevic of Serbia finished in third with a distance of 61.38m.
Perkovic will look to achieve a throw of over 67 metres in Split this weekend where she will face a difficult opponent in Yarelis Barrios of Cuba.
Vlasic won all seven of the Diamond League meets in the high jump this season, ultimately adding the Diamond Trophy to her already long list of achievements, which includes a silver medal from the Beijing Olympics. She also has the second highest height cleared in high jump history, 2.08m set last year.
Yesterday her jump of 2.02m topped second place, Svetlana Shkolina’s, jump of 1.93m. Irina Gordeyeva of Russia finished third with a height of 1.87m.
This weekend Vlasic heads to her home town of Split to participate in the Continental Cup where she hopes to be able to break the world record of 2.09m. Her season best to date was set in Roma, a jump of 2.03m.
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