Keila Costa in action in the qualification round of the women's Triple Jump (© Getty Images)
Yargeris Savigne topped the qualifiers in Tuesday morning’s women’s Triple jump qualifying and will go for her third gold medal in succession in the final on Thursday night.
Savigne, silver medallist at Helsinki 2005 and champion at both Osaka 2007 and Berlin 2009, reached 14.62m with her third and final jump of the qualifying round to lead overall from her Cuban teammate Mabel Gay and Caterine Ibarguen of Colombia.
Ibarguen, the Colombian national record holder in the High Jump, has improved in leaps and bounds this year since being convinced to concentrate on the Triple Jump. She did 14.53 on her first jump in qualifying, 13 centimetres beyond the 14.40 required for automatic advancement, and was able to head straight back to the cool of the athletes’ village.
May got her 14.52 at her second attempt, so she, too, had the benefit of early respite from the morning heat.
No other woman got the automatic qualifying distance though medal contenders Olha Saladuha (14.40), Yamile Aldama (season’s best 14.35) and World indoor champion Olga Rypakova (14.33) all came close.
Twelfth place in the final went to Keila Costa of Brazil who needed only 14.15m.
The others to go through to Thursday night’s final were Anna Kuropatkina of Russia, Baya Rahouli of Algeria, Dana Veldakova of the Slovak Republic, Natalia Iastrebova of Ukraine and Biljana Topic of Serbia, meaning 10 countries will be represented.
Len Johnson for the IAAF
