As an exercise in separating the best from the rest, the women’s 5,000m semi-finals served their purpose. Other than that, we know precious little more about the likely outcome of Saturday's than we did before.
In the absence of Tirunesh Dibaba, the Olympic champion Meseret Defar still seems the woman to beat. And her main challengers still appear to be fellow Ethiopians Meselech Melkamu and Gelete Burka, the Kenyan Vivian Cheruiyot, or Elvan Abeylegesse, the Turk who took the 10,000m silver last Saturday.
Abeylegesse and Defar won the heats in 15min 06.26sec and 15min 10.13sec respectively. But neither they nor the other automatic qualifiers needed to extend themselves until the last lap or two on another sticky night at the Nagai Stadium.
The only casualty of note was the Moroccan Mariam Alaoui Selsouli. The sixth fastest in the world this year, she ran in the 1500m earlier in the day and, unsurprisingly, dropped out of her second race of the day.
Abeylegesse’s victory came thanks to a 63-second last lap after a group of eight athletes had been whittled down to five by Cheruiyot’s injection of pace at 4,000m.
That was the number needed for automatic qualification, and with the five final places decided, all that was left was point scoring. Abeylegesse scored the most as she sprinted away, proving that she’s one athlete not suffering any significant after-effects from the 10,000m final.
However, she did reveal later that she’s been having treatment for leg pain for the last three days. “I will see what happens,” she said. “I entered this race planning to give it a try and it was successful.”
Behind her came the two Kenyans, Burka, and then Shalane Flanagan of the United States, with the Belarussian Volha Krautsova getting just reward for her earlier front running in the shape of a season’s best 15:17.64 and a place in the final as a fastest loser.
Defar and Melkemu wasted little energy in negotiating their way thorugh a largely uneventful second race. It started at a pedestrian pace with Jessica Augusto of Portugal at the front, and stayed that way for the best part of 4,000m.
There was still a thick group of 10 with three laps to go, but that became eight with two left when Britain’s Jo Pavey moved to the front, leaving Augusto struggling. Pavey led them through the bell and Defar, Melkemu and Kenya’s Priscah Jepleting kicked for home from 200m out. Pavey was fourth with Jennifer Rhines of the USA finishing strongly for fifth.
Early leader Augusto and the Russian Mariya Konovalova qualified as fastest losers along with Italy’s Silvia Weissteiner.
Japan’s Kayoko Fukushi gave the disappointingly small crowd something to cheer when she was fastest qualifier from heat one.
Osaka 2007 News Team/mkb
