Shkurenev wooden medal
The main event of the seventh day of the World Athletics Championship was the denouement of intrigue in the men's decathlon. According to the results of the first half of the competition, Ilya Shkurenev took fifth place, having excellent prospects due to the remaining types of the program to rise one line, or even two. While at the top of the standings the reigning world champion Kevin Mayer from France dealt with Damian Warner from Canada, the Russian first had to fight with the athlete from Grenada, Lyndon Victor, another Canadian, Pierce Lepage and Estonian Maisel Uibo.
The second day began with a 110 meter run with barriers, in which Shkurenev could not boast of good seconds. However, he was able to show his best result of the season, breaking the distance in 14.28 s, and in full-time confrontation ahead of Uybo and Victor. The leaders, meanwhile, came off even more. Warner ran for 13.56 s - in a dispute with narrow specialists in this discipline, he would have taken sixth place the day before, while Mayer could have divided eighth.
After six events, @DamianWarner 🇨🇦 leads @mayer_decathlon 🇫🇷 by 71 points.
They're now up in the discus, which could shake things up a little. # WorldAthleticsChampspic.twitter.com / pk0y9P2KMW
In discus throwing, Shkurenev also had to squeeze the maximum out of himself in order to fight for medals. In this form, he accomplished a real feat - he improved his rather modest personal record of 46.04 meters to 48.75 meters. The Russian was never known as a good thrower, but in Doha he showed the second result among all rivals. Other competitors failed miserably in this round - Meyer threw 48.34 meters, losing four meters to personal records, Warner and Lepage closed the protocol with very weak attempts at 42.19 meters and 41.19 meters, and Victor never threw a disc by the rules and got zero points for this view. Shkurenev climbed to fourth place in the overall standings.
Next came the most insidious kind of decathlon - pole vaulting. The proverbial “gone or missing” illustrates it best. Often recognized favorites stumbled at the initial height and dropped out of the fight, while those who are naturally inclined to such jumps scored a huge amount of points. Shkurenev belongs to the second category. He reached a solid height for decathletes, a height of 5.20 m. Lepage showed an equal result with the Russian, and Uybo exceeded his capabilities and jumped another 20 centimeters higher.
By that time, it was already known that the world record holder Kevin Mayer had dropped out of the fight. He began his performances with 4.60 m and failed the first two attempts. Even before that, he was tormented by health problems, but pole vaults exacerbated his injuries so much that he decided to abandon further struggle.
A lot of decathlon drama to catch up with 🥺
In the last few minutes, Lindon Victor 🇬🇩 hit three ❌ in the discus, Devon Williams 🇺🇸 no heights in the pole vault and injury forces world record-holder @mayer_decathlon to abandon his quest for #WorldAthleticsChamps title defense. pic.twitter.com/QkOvdfMK2w
Four athletes remained in the dispute over the medals - Lepage, who took the lead, yielding only two points to Shkurenev and Uybo with Warner, who were 22 points behind the Russian. At the same time, the sixth German Niklas Kaul was the dark horse - both in javelin throw and in the 1,500-meter run his personal records were very high and allowed him to play any lag.
The last power view immediately deleted from the list of Lepage. He threw a spear only at 57.42 m, showing the worst result among applicants for medals. Given the fact that the Canadian rarely runs out of five minutes at a distance of 1,500 m, his claims to the medal have come to an end. Shkurenev made a little brighter and in the best attempt sent a projectile at 59.56 m - for a specialist in running and jumping it was worthy.
But the Russian was not an intermediate leader for long. First Uibo passed him, throwing a spear at 63.83 m. Then the strongest group in this type of program came to the sector, in which Kaul was especially brilliant. The 21-year-old German broke his personal record by showing 79.05 m, and immediately rose to second place in the total of all points. And Warner, with a score of 62.87 m, pushed Shkurenev to fourth place.
In this company, it was the Russian who became the black sheep, since he had the worst personal record in the 1,500 m run. To become at least a bronze medalist, he had to be almost four seconds ahead of Warner in the decisive race, and he won even more from the other decathlon .
The miracle still did not happen. After the first round, Shkurenev was at the end of the general group, and after another 400 m he was ten seconds behind the leaders. The next mark doubled the loss. Although the Russian ran faster than ever this season, he again, like four years ago, stopped a step away from the podium. 21-year-old Kaul won gold, Uybo took second place and brought Estonia the first competition medal in six years, Warner became a bronze medalist. Shkurenev lost to the Canadian only 35 points.
Niklas Kaul 🇩🇪 becomes the youngest world decathlon champion in #WorldAthleticsChamps history.
8691 points - personal best
World U18 champion
World U20 champion
World champion 🌍 pic.twitter.com/yfmiy4qqMn
The end of the Tiam era
In the women's heptathlon, a dispute over gold after the second form only went between two athletes. The current winner of the Olympic Games, World and European Championships Nafissatu Tiam from Belgium was challenged by British all-around Katarina Johnson-Thompson. They alternately replaced each other on the first line, until after the ultrafast 200m race the owner of a double surname strengthened in the status of a leader. Johnson-Thompson at the same time became the best in long jump, in which she five years ago was the vice champion of the world in enclosed spaces.
The javelin throw did not shake the position of the British athlete, and before the race for 800 m she was ahead of Tiam by as many as 137 points. She did not have to spend the earned stock. Johnson-Thompson broke a personal record in the final discipline, which allowed her to achieve a fantastic result of 6981 points. Only five girls in history, including the Belgian silver medalist, have ever earned more. The third place in the overall standings was unexpectedly taken by the Austrian Verena Preiner, who previously had only Universiade gold in her collection.
6981 points 🧮
National record 🇬🇧
World champion 🥇 @ JohnsonThompson wins #WorldAthleticsChamps heptathlon gold. pic.twitter.com/1c3epbN24b
Bronze for Ortega
The fight for medals in the 110 m hurdles was held not only on the sprint track of the Khalifa Stadium, but also in the judges' offices. Immediately after the race took place, the Spanish side filed a protest on its results. One of the favorites, Orlando Ortega, confidently claimed bronze in the last meters, but could not maintain his position because of Jamaican Omar MacLeod, who fell in the distance and touched the Spaniard who was running nearby. As a result, Ortega finished only fifth, and the Frenchman Pascal Martino-Lagar became the third.
FLASH:
The jury of appeal reconsidered the case in the 110m hurdles final and in view of the obstruction which impeded @ 110_ortega, the jury directs that a second 🥉medal be awarded to Ortega. # WorldAthleticsChampspic.twitter.com / ICTREozU8U
The Spanish national team did not accept this outcome and demanded that one of the three requirements be fulfilled - either to organize the race anew, or to allow Ortega to run alone and include a new result in the protocol, or award him with a separate bronze medal. After almost a day, the judging committee decided to choose the third option. For the first time in history, two athletes at once shared third place at the 110m World Championship. The remaining winners remained the same, including Sergei Shubenkov, who retained his silver medal. By the way, he ambiguously reacted to the decision to award Ortega with bronze.
“I, in fact, are immensely happy for Ortega, for I saw in what state he was yesterday. But such a decision gives rise to a bad precedent and raises a bunch of questions, ”the Russian wrote on Twitter.
China's breakthrough
The Chinese team completed the first week of competition in second place in the medal standings. For the first time since 1993, the Celestial athletes managed to win three gold medals at one world championship. Another victory after triumph in women's walking was won by the core pusher Lijiao Gong, who defended her title.
Throughout the final, she was in the lead, ahead of the Jamaican athlete Daniel Thomas-Dodd and German Kristina Schwanitz, while the winners of the previous World Championships Anita Morton from Hungary and Michelle Carter from the USA could not boast of successful attempts at least for 19 m.
The only time that Gong Lijiao’s victory was nearly called into question occurred in the fifth round. Thomas-Dodd sent a shell 20 meters ahead and was supposed to get ahead of the Chinese woman with her throw at 19.55 meters. But the judges did not count this attempt by the Jamaican athlete, and the 30-year-old Chinese woman won her second consecutive gold and sixth medal in her career.
Gong Lijiao 🇨🇳 wins back-to-back shot put gold.
Her #WorldAthleticsChamps record
2007: 6th
2009: 🥉
2011: 🥉
2013: 🥉
2015: 🥈
2017: 🥇
2019: 🥇
Take a bow! pic.twitter.com/VjbTfTbLpr
Bahrain Superfast Gold
In the women's 400m race, fans no longer expect that someone after Marita Kokh and Yarmila Kratokhvilova will ever be able to run out of 48 seconds. Their great results have been unshakable since the 1980s, and no one has come close to them yet.
But in Doha, in the finals of the World Cup, one athlete managed to make an application to someday push the representatives of the GDR and Czechoslovakia. Bahrain athlete Salva Aid Nasser, who had fled for Nigeria in the past, won gold in a lap race with an incredible result of 48.14 s. This is the third time in the history of one of the most rebellious disciplines, and he was expected even more than other world records.
The second was a track and field athlete from the Bahamas, Seanna Miller-Uybo. She, too, stood above all praise and ran the distance in 48.37 s - this is the sixth time in history and America's new record. Bronze went to Jamaican runner Sherika Jackson, who broke a personal record, but lost more than a second to the first two girls.
Salwa Naser - remember the name !!
First Gold for Bahrain and of the Arab nations in this #WorldAthleticsChamps
WL time of 48.14 🏅
Well done Salwa 🇧🇭 pic.twitter.com/rWT85Ef61n