Jefferson-Wooden takes big step forward
Sprinter breaks 22 seconds in 200 to defeat Olympic champion Thomas in Grand Slam Track meet in Philadelphia
Melissa Jefferson-Wooden became the 43rd woman — and the 19th American — in history to have run under 22 seconds for 200 meters in the Grand Slam Track meet in Philadelphia on Saturday. But winning the race, and defeating Olympic champion Gabby Thomas in the process, appeared to be the most important accomplishment to her.
Jefferson-Wooden had won the women’s short sprints event category in each of the first two Grand Slam meets of the season, but she had finished second in the 200 in the first meet of the year in Kingston, Jamaica, and third in the that event in the second meet in Miramar, Florida, after she having previously won the 100.
She had lowered her personal best in the 200 by three tenths of a second in Miramar, but the competitor in her was not happy with the fact that Thomas and fellow American Tamari Davis had overtaken her in the final straightway after she had the lead coming out of the curve.
The 24-year-old Jefferson-Wooden again ran a better turn than anyone else in the race at Franklin Field on Saturday, but this time neither Thomas or Davis, or anyone else in the race, was able to catch her and she crossed the finish line in 21.99 seconds to better the 22.15 personal best she had set in Miramar.
Thomas finished second in 22.10, followed by Davis in 22.59, Dina Asher-Smith of Great Britain in 22.65, and Jadyn Mays of the U.S. in 22.80.
“I’ve been training for it, I told myself what happened in Miami wasn’t going to happen again,” Jefferson-Wooden said in a straitstimes.com post.
Although Thomas ran the final 100 meters of the race six hundredths of a second faster than Jefferson-Wooden, the latter had a lead of .17 seconds over the former after the 100 meters. And while Thomas did make up some ground on Jefferson-Wooden in the final 50 meters of the race, she never drew close enough to make the Olympic bronze medalist in the 100 feel so much pressure that she tightened up and lost her form.
Jefferson-Wooden was one of 11 athletes who won races on the first day of the two-day meet that was held before an appreciative crowd at the facility that is home to the Penn Relays.
Three of the other top performances were turned in by Canadian Marco Arop in the men’s 800 meters and Americans Kenny Bednarek and Jamal Britt in the men’s 200 and 110 high hurdles, respectively.
Olympic silver medalist Arop won the 800 in 1:43.38 after leading the race for the final 600 meters. World indoor champion Josh Hoey of the U.S. finished second in 1:44.41, and he was followed by compatriots Yared Nuguse and Hobbs Kessler, who ran 1:45.36 and 1:45.60, respectively.
Josh Kerr of Great Britain finished fifth in 1:45.80, followed by Olympic 1,500 champion Cole Hocker of the U.S. in 1:45.81.
Arop, who also won the 800 as part of the short distance event category in the previous two Grand Slam meets, was just ahead of Hoey and Kessler when he went through 200 meters in 25.09 and those two remained his closest pursuers when he passed 400 meters in 52.05.
Arop’s lead over the second-place Hoey had grown a little bit when he went through 600 meters in 1:17.64, but the Canadian powered away from the American in the final 150 of the race as his margin of victory ended up being a little more than a second.
“I felt great” Arop said in a post-race interview that was part of the Peacock broadcast. “You know, the crowd, look at this. It’s easy to run fast in a stadium like this. So I have to… put on a show for them.”
While Arop dominated the final half-lap of the 800, Bednarek took the lead in the first few steps of the 200 and went on to win the race by more than half a second with his 19.95-second clocking.
The silver medalist in the last two Olympic Games, Bednarek had run what was then a yearly world-leading time of 19.85 in winning the Grand Slam meet in Miramar while finishing nearly three tenths of a second in front of Oblique Seville of Jamaica.
But with Seville not competing in Philadelphia due to an injury, Bednarek was five hundredths of a second ahead of second-place Bryan Levell of Jamaica after the first 50 meters of the race and he was .13 up on second-place Christian Coleman of the U.S. after the first 100.
He then blew open the contest by running his final two-50-meter segments in 4.75 seconds and 4.88, respectively. In comparison, Zharnel Hughes of Great Britain ran those stretches in 4.84 and 5.19 while finishing second in 20.50.
Canadians Aaron Brown and Andre De Grasse finished third and fourth in 20.50 and 20.58, with Levell fifth in 20.63 and Coleman sixth in 20.66.
The victory was the fifth in five Grand Slam races for Bednarek, as he had won both the 100 and 200 in the short sprints division in the first two meets.
Britt was an upset winner in the 110 high hurdles as his 13.08 clocking turned back fellow Americans Cordell Tinch, who placed second in 13.10, and Trey Cunningham, who finished third in 13.18. They were followed by Olympic silver medalist Daniel Roberts of the U.S. in 13.30 and Lorenzo Simonelli of Italy in 13.55.
Tinch had moved into a tie for fourth on the all-time performer list when he clocked a yearly world-leading time of 12.87 in a Diamond League meet in Shaoxing/Keqiao, China, on May 3 and Cunningham had tied his personal best of 13.00 in the Grand Slam meet in Miramar later that day.
But Britt was first hurdler over the first three barriers on Saturday before Tinch was in the lead from hurdles four through six. However, Britt, running in lane two, had edged ahead of Tinch, in lane six, at the seventh hurdle and he never gave up his lead after that while narrowing missing his personal best of 13.07 that he set last year.
In contrast to Britt’s narrow win in the high hurdles, Ackera Nugent of Jamaica had a substantial margin of victory in the women’s 100 hurdles, as did Marileidy Paulino of the Dominican Republic in the women’s 400 and Matthew Hudson-Smith of Great Britain in the men’s 400.
Nugent, the bronze medalist in the 60 hurdles in the World indoor championships in March, had placed a distant third behind Americans Masai Russell and Tia Jones when that pair had run the second- and third-fastest times in history with their 12.17 and 12.19 clockings in the Grand Slam meet in Miramar.
But with Russell out of Saturday’s meet with an injury, Nugent ran 12.44 to finish well ahead of second-place Jones in 12.60. Megan Tapper of Jamaica finished third in 12.66, followed by Americans Tonea Marshall in fourth in 12.68 and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in fifth in 12.70.
McLaughlin-Levrone, the two-time defending Olympic champion in the 400 hurdles, had dominated the long hurdles event division in the first two Grand Slam meets of the season, but she decided to change things up in Philadelphia and her 12.70 clocking was just five hundredths of a second off the personal best of 12.65 that she had run in 2021.
Olympic champion Paulino had finished third behind Salwa Eid Naser of Bahrain and Thomas in the 400 in the inaugural Grand Slam meet in Kingston, but she won the event for the second consecutive time on Saturday as her season best of 49.12 left her well ahead of Nickisha Pryce of Jamaica in 50.04 and Isabella Whittaker of the U.S. in 50.16.
Eid Naser, who ran 48.94 and 48.67 in her first two meets of the season, initially placed second in 49.47, but she was disqualified for a lane violation as she had run most of the home straightaway in lane five after starting the race in lane six.
Paulino did not get out well as she was in seventh place after the first 100 meters of the race. However, she was in third place when she came through 200 meters in 23.97 and she was in second when she passed the 300-meter mark in 36.10. She then overtook Eid Naser with about 60 meters to go.
Olympic silver medalist Hudson-Smith was in about fourth place after the first 200 of the men’s 400, but he took the lead during the second turn and won the race by more than half a second as his 44.51 clocking turned back second-place Khaleb McRae of the U.S. in 45.04. Jereem Richards of Trinidad and Tobago placed third in 45.05 and he was followed by Olympic bronze medalist Muzala Samukanga of Zambia in 45.10 and Matthew Boling of the U.S. in 45.21.
In other races on Saturday, Diribe Welteji of Ethiopia won the women’s 1,500 in 3:58.04, Alison dos Santos of Brazil took the men’s 400 intermediate hurdles in 48.11, Anna Cockrell of the U.S. placed first in the women’s 400 hurdles in 54.04, and Agnes Ngetich of Kenya won the women’s 3,000 in 8:43.61.
After leading the field through the first 400 of the 1,500 in 62.44 seconds, Welteji was in second place when Australian Jessica Hull came through 800 meters in 2:08.74 and 1,200 in 3:11.18. And she calmly ran behind Hull for the next 250-plus meters of the race before moving past her.
Olympic silver medalist Hull finished second in 3:58.36, followed by Nikki Hiltz of the U.S. in 4:00.54, Olympic bronze medalist Georgia Hunter Bell of Great Britain in 4:00.85, and Abbey Caldwell of Australia in 4:01.54.
Dos Santos, the 2022 World champion in the 400 hurdles, posted his third consecutive Grand Slam victory in that event. But his latest win did not come easily as he trailed the American trio of Chris Robinson, Trevor Bassitt, and Caleb Dean after the first five hurdles of the race and he was still behind Robinson and Bassitt after clearing the eighth barrier.
However, he had moved ahead of the two of them by the ninth hurdle and he gradually pulled away from Bassitt during the remainder of the race as the bronze medalist in the 2022 World championships finished second in 48.25. Robinson placed third in 48.76, followed by Dean in 49.48.
Olympic silver medalist Cockrell won the women’s 400 hurdles by a sizeable margin after being in fourth place at the fifth barrier and in second at the sixth and seventh hurdles. But she had moved ahead of early race leader Rushell Clayton of Jamaica by the eighth barrier and her advantage grew during the remainder of the race as her 54.04 clocking left her well in front of compatriot Jasmine Jones, who finished second in 54.65 while running her first race of the outdoor season.
Jamaican Andrenette Knight placed third in 54.86, followed by Dalilah Muhammad of the U.S. in 54.88, and Clayton in 55.14.
Ngetich, who holds the women’s world 10,000-meter road record at 28:46, won a tactical 3,000 after holding off Ejgayehu Taye of Ethiopia in the home straightaway.
Ngetich had forced the pace in the 3,000 in the first two Grand Slam meets as she had run 8:28.75 to finish second in Kingston and 8:23.14 to place third in Miramar. But she was not in a hurry on Saturday when she led the eight-runner field through the first kilometer in 3:03.73 and the second in 6:17.16.
She was still in the lead at 2,500 meters, but American Josette Andrews was in front when she had a split of 7:42.03 at the start of the bell lap. However, Ngetich had moved past Andrews with 300 meters left and Taye and Andrews were running in second and third place heading into the final curve.
Andrews began to fall back shortly after that and Taye seemed poised to strike as she ran just off Ngetich’s shoulder entering the home straightaway. But she was never able to get by her and Ngetich’s 8:43.61 clocking left her just ahead of Taye in 8:43.70.
Andrews finished third in 8:44.70, followed by compatriots Weini Kelati in 8:45.31 and Elise Cranny in 8:45.44.
Ngetich ran her last lap in 61.54 seconds and her final 200 in 29.95.
Today’s meet will start at 3:41 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time, with the running of the men’s 400 meters that is the second event in the men’s long hurdles category. It will conclude with the men’s 100 at 5:22.
The coverage of the meet on Peacock will start at 3 p.m.