No offense is meant to Shawn Crawford, as he’s been very successful in the past (including last year), but I don’t think Usain was facing a top calibre field for 100m.
TORONTO, June 11 AFP - World record-holder Usain Bolt won his first 100-meter race since a foot injury suffered in an April car crash, capturing the title at the Festival of Excellence meet here Thursday.
Rainy conditions kept the Jamaican star from approaching his world record of 9.69 from Beijing, where he also set the 200m world record to win gold, but he took the race at Varsity Stadium in 10.00 seconds.
American Shawn Crawford, the 2004 Olympic 200m champion and runner-up to Bolt at Beijing, finished second in 10.25 seconds with countryman Ivory Williams third in 10.28 seconds. It felt good,'' Bolt said. I think I should have done a little better. For me it’s all right. I got through it injury-free, so that’s a good thing.’’
Bolt, 22, crashed his car in a ditch two months ago and required stitches after having a procedure to remove thorns from his left foot as he exited the vehicle.
Bolt, who clocked a wind-aided 9.93 in his first 100m of the season in Jamaica in March, withdrew from a May 2 meet in Kingston after the injury but two weeks later ran the fastest 150m ever in Manchester, England.
Cool and damp conditions had Bolt adopting a conservative pace, fearful of an injury that could threaten his hopes for a starring role at the World Championships in Germany in August. That's the right thing to do,'' Bolt said. You’ve got to be very careful because you have a lot of running to do and you can’t manage to get injured at this time of the season. I'm kind of used to running in the rain. I prefer not to run in the rain.'' The race featured two false starts, the latter disqualifying Jamaica's Marvin Anderson. It threw me off a little bit but not much,’’ Bolt said.
Sadly typical. Let the guest runner choose the field but bring in top hurdlers to go against our girls where they need to show well- they beat them anyway. Everyone seemed happy with Bolt and no one noticed the rest of the field anyway. It was a miserable night and it was fortunate no one was injured.
On a side note, the track is Polytan M surface, I ran on it last week and its sort of soft. How does this compare vs. mondo surfaces? Since all claims are that the track is really fast, or is that only comparing it to your good ol high school track?
Haven’t heard anything good but the Provincial HS times were fast- 10.52 and 20.99 I heard.
Well see at nationals. I was there for the public school meets and there were prevailing headwinds.
Ya and the weather at provincials was perfect and so was the wind and etc. Guy who ran the 20.99 also ran a 21.2 and 10.47 in brockville the week before.