- Aussie young gun shattered her own record
Australian sprinter Torrie Lewis has made light of a stacked field and a headwind to smash her own national 100m record and storm into the semi-finals on day one of the world athletics championships in Tokyo.
Lining up against defending world champion Sha’Carri Richardson from the US, two-time world 200m champ Shericka Jackson from Jamaica and two other runners with career sub-11 second PBs, Lewis could well have been overwhelmed.
Instead she was inspired.
The 20-year-old flew out of the blocks on Saturday and held her form in the closing stages to clock 11.08 seconds into a 0.8m per second headwind.
She finished a close third behind Richardson (11.03) and Jackson (11.04), with only the top three in each heat guaranteed to advance.
Lewis stripped two-hundredths of a second from her previous national record of 11.10 set last year in Canberra, with the promise of even better to come in Sunday’s semi-finals.
Torrie Lewis has smashed her own national record to race into the 100m semifinals
The 20-year-old flew out of the blocks on Saturday and held her form in the closing stages to clock 11.08 seconds into a 0.8m per second headwind
‘I was super nervous before this competition because I knew in training that these are the times I can hit,’ she said.
‘Actually this is the slowest time in my mind that I had, so hopefully I can build on that.’
Lewis was proud of how she handled the cards she was dealt in the heats.
‘It was like ‘thanks guys for giving me the hardest one’,’ she said.
‘But after I let it sink in I was very glad I had them because I can run with them, and who cares if they beat me, because they’re the best in the world ever, almost.
‘So I just wanted to run as fast as I could with them and see how I go.’
Fellow Australians Bree Rizzo and Ella Connolly were eliminated in the opening round.
Reigning Olympic champion Julien Alfred from St Lucia led the qualifiers in 10.93.
Lewis says she is planning to go faster in her next race
Australian Rohan Browning missed out on a spot in the men’s 100m semis by an agonising one hundredth of a second.
Browning came into the world titles on the back of his most consistent season but could not replicate that form at the National Stadium.
Even so, for some time it looked like his fifth-placed effort of 10.16 might be enough to sneak into the semis, until Dutch runner Elvis Afrifa edged him out by running 10.15 for fourth in the last of the seven heats.
South African Gift Leotlela was a surprise fastest qualifier in 9.87, while the big guns including American world and Olympic champ Noah Lyles and Jamaican Kishane Thompson also advanced with ease.
Looking every inch the runner who claimed a historic silver at last year’s Paris Olympics, Jessica Hull was a commanding winner of the first of three women’s 1500m heats.
Hull sat near the front for the duration of the race and covered all moves in the final straight to win in 4:04.40.
She will be joined in Sunday’s semi-finals by compatriot Linden Hall, who was fourth in her heat.
Hull showed no after-effects from her shocking defeat at the recent Diamond League final in Zurich when she ran out of gas and was pipped on the line by Kenyan Nelly Chepchirchir.
‘It’s hard when it’s the first race after something like that so I definitely was a little bit more intuitive in my body,’ she said.
‘I wanted to feel what I was feeling and just trust it.’I had the gears I thought I would have when I was fully tapered and fresh.’
World championships bronze medallist Kurtis Marschall eased into the pole vault final with a first-time clearance at 5.75m.
Lauren Ryan was the leading Australian home in ninth place in a women’s 10,000m final won in thrilling style by two-time Olympic champion Beatrice Chebet from Kenya.
Chebet won in 30:37.61 but only after holding off an astonishing late challenge from Nadia Battocletti who broke the Italian record with 30:38.23.
