Yekaterina Volkova produced a sizzling display of distance running to deliver the second fastest time in her event's relatively brief history here tonight, clocking 9min 06.57sec to strike a richly deserved gold.
In only the second running of the women’s Steeplechase at the World Championships, Volkova took the race by the scruff of the neck with just over three laps to go.
After the Russian took the lead just before the 2km mark, she simply ground down the opposition on her way to a championship record.
In second place, Volkova’s team-mate Tatyana Petrova recorded 9:09.19 - the fourth fastest time in history - to take silver with Kenya's No1 Eunice Jepkorir winning bronze in 9:20.09.
But there was disappointment for pre-race favourite Gulnara Samitova. This year's world leader faded to a distant seventh, after having set off through the first kilometre inside her own world record pace.
Volkova, who won the silver medal two years ago in Helsinki, said: “I knew 600m before the finish I would win. I was not thinking about new times or a personal best, it is a great bonus."
A sweat-soaked Nagai Stadium was hardly the ideal setting for swift times and aggressive tactics but Samitova showed her intent from the gun quickly muscling her way to the front and opening a five-metre lead at 400m.
At the end of lap two, she was joined by Jepkorir, the African and Commonwealth record-holder, the pair holding a ten-metre advantage back to the main bunch.
Four laps out and the lead pair were joined by Volkova, Petrova and French athlete Sophie Duarte as the race approached its decisive phase.
Volkova could wait no longer. She sped to the front down the back straight and led by five metres with three laps left - a lead she was not to relinquish.
Samitova and Duarte dropped off the back and when, with 600m to go, Petrova kicked beyond Jepkorir, who was suffering stomach cramps, the medal positions were set.
Such was Volkova’s advantage she even had time to cheekily raise her arms in celebration 100m from the finish – a potentially embarrassing gesture with still one barrier to negotiate.
However, the 29-year-old mother avoided the humiliation of a thousand or so TV playbacks by clearing the last obstacle and punched the air in delight 40m out from the finish.
Volkova admitted she was now unlikely to run in the 5000m – an event she is also entered.
Osaka 2007 News Team/sl
