Womens 800m Round 1 Summary
Maria Mutola aiming to capture an historic fourth consecutive 800m title made no mistakes in her qualifying round. She let Lwiza Myani John of Tanzania and Hasna Benhassi of Morocco take on the pace-making duties before taking the lead on the back straight. She finished in 2:02.96 but heat 1 had the toughest field with Ludmila Formanova (2:00.49) Natalya Tsyganova (2:00.77), Meredith Rainey-Valmon (2:01.41), Malin Ewerlof (2:02.23) and Letitia Vriesde (2:02.51) - all faster than the Mozambican.