Another World champion bit the dust in the 200m when Justin Gatlin was beaten into fourth as fellow American Tyson Gay flew to a 19.96 victory to make up for finishing out of the medals in Helsinki.
Gay’s winning time was only three hundredths outside his best despite a 1.5 m/s headwind. Jamaica’s Chris Williams found his best form of the season to finish second in 20.19 while World silver medallist Wallace Spearmon also got the better of Gatlin to finish third in 20.21.
Gatlin focused solely on the 200m here because he wanted to make sure he ended the year as world ranked number one in both sprints. There’s little hope of that now, as he got a typically slow start in lane four and was left trailing his three chief rivals around the bend.
Despite his best efforts in the straight he could only get within four hundredths of Spearmon as Gay who accelerated in lane six to put clear daylight between himself and Williams.
Gatlin claimed afterwards that he was feeling a strain in his quads and didn’t want to suffer the same fate as 400m man Jeremy Wariner, who pulled up injured before the finish. But he would have needed a flying finish to catch Gay.
MB