Valencia’s World Indoor Championships may well be Liu Xiang’s first indoor appearance of the season, the Chinese World and Olympic champion certainly made an impression as he cruised to a very comfortable win to take the third and final semi-final in 7.57.
After his customary super fast start, Liu worked hard between the five barriers to gain enough ground over European 110m Hurdles champion Stanislavs Olijars and Yoel Hernandez to be able to jog through the line and still secure first place.
At 7.60 and 7.63 respectively, Olijars and Hernandez will also be part of the final, the last event in tonight’s programme.
Despite a false start, British champion Allan Scott was impressive out of his blocks and held his early lead all the way to the finish to beat three-time World Indoor champion Allen Johnson, 7.57 to 7.64 in heat one.
Johnson seemed to cut his efforts a couple of metres from the line which nearly cost him the final as fast finishing Dongpeng Shi of China was just one hundredth of a second behind.
Spanish record holder Jackson Quinonez who is one of the host country’s strongest hopes for a medal, recovered from an appalling start to take the last qualifying spot in 7.63 in third. Ahead of him European silver medallist Thomas Blaschek and Russia’s Evgeniy Borisov clocked 7.59 and 7.61 respectively.
The eight finalist will return to the track at 8.35pm: watch out all the way from lane 1 (Quinonez) to lane 8 (Johnson) with a particularly close eye on lane 6 (Xiang)!
Laura Arcoleo for the IAAF
