 |
BOSTON | |
BOSTON: A lost shoe didn't slow Dejen Gebremeskel on Saturday, the rising young Ethiopian shrugging off the slip-up to win the 3,000m at the Boston Indoor Grand Prix athletics meeting.
Gebremeskel, 22, clocked 7:35.37 in a performance that displayed his gritty determination as he ran nearly 14 laps with a single spiked shoe.
"My (right) shoe got knocked off after the first lap," said Gebremeskel. "I still don't know how it happened.
"Sure it was painful from there. My foot was kind of burning."
Even so, Gebremeskel responded when the race turned into a three-man battle coming off the final turn.
In a sprint to the finishing tape, he fought off European champion Mo Farah of Britain (7:35.81) and Nixon Chepseba of Kenya (7:37.64.).
"Sure I'm disappointed, I never like to lose," said Farah, who had been named the British Olympic Committee's track athlete of the year for 2010.
"Tell you the truth, I don't know how he (Gebremeskel) did it. I thought for sure that, running that way, just one shoe, would take its toll on him sooner or later. But it didn't. He was too tough for all of us today."
Gebremeskel, who was ranked seventh in the world at 5,000 meters in 2010, signaled his intentions for a 2011 season that includes a World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, and will also be a springboard to the 2012 London Olympics.
The men's mile produced a long-shot winner in American Russell Brown, who closed fast to win in 3:54.81 - fastest in the world this year.
He not only held off his former Stanford University teammate Garrett Heath - who was second in 3:55.87 - but left such notables as Nick Willis of New Zealand, the 2008 Olympic 1500-meter silver medalist, Henok Legesse of Ethiopia, and US outdoor record-holder Alan Webb down the track.
Willis was third in 3:56.29, Legesse fourth (3:58.06) and Webb just seventh.
"I had no idea this was going to happen," Brown said. "Even when I heard the announcer saying 'Russell Brown, he's going to win it,' I still didn't believe him."
Marina Muncan of Serbia scored a major triumph - the first of her life on the indoor professional circuit - taking the women's mile in 4:34.46.
Muncan's next big event will be the 1,500 meters at the European Indoor Championships, March 6-8 in Paris.
Kenya's Sally Kipyego won the women's 3,000m, clocking 8:49.74 to edge American Jenny Simpson (8:50.78).
Otherwise, American women dominated. Lauryn Williams leaned into the finish to take the 60m title in 7:17sec ahead of fellow Americans Marshevet Myers (7.18) and Lisa Barber (7.23.)
Natasha Hastings clocked 52.29sec to add the Boston indoor 400m title to the Millrose Games title she won eight days earlier, Phoebe Wright won the 800m in 2:01.01 and Jenn Suhr won the pole vault with a height of 4.61m.
US men swept the top three places in the 60m as Trell Kimmons (6.60) outdueled Chris Davis (6.66) and Ivory Williams (6.68.).
Two rarely raced distances completed the men's track events. Calvin Smith won the 300m in 32.93 and Duane Solomon won the 600m in 1:17.00.
No comments:
Post a Comment