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Jana almost throws it away
By Mike Hurst
30jun03
JANA PITTMAN has now eliminated every other female 400m hurdler in the world from a potential share in the $1.51 million Golden League athletics jackpot this year.
But after winning a desperately close race in Oslo - one of the six Golden League meets - she told The Daily Telegraph: “I was lucky I got through the race. I nearly handed it [victory] to her on a platter.”
The “her” referred to Romania’s two-time European championship winner Ionela Tirlea, who finished 0.05sec behind the Australian’s winning mark of 54.42sec.
America’s Sandra Glover (54.80), South Africa’s Surita Febbraio (55.25) and Ukrainian Tatiana Tereschuk (56.04) were all well beaten.
The Golden League jackpot will be split between all the athletes who win all six of their designated events.
So it’s one down and five to go for the 20-year-old from Sydney.
Although the men’s 100m is a Golden League event this year, Patrick Johnson has opted out but at his second low-key meet of the European season in Bern yesterday he won in 10.07sec (headwind 0.3m/sec) from Ghana’s Eric Nkansa (10.35sec).
“It was one of those races hopefully I’ll be able to forget after next week,” Pittman said, refering to her next Golden League race in Paris this Friday.
But her immediate focus is on tomorrow night’s super grand prix in quaint Lausanne, where she will race the flat 400m against a field including the Jamaican world No.2 Lorraine Fenton, world title-holder Amy Mbacke Thiam of Senegal and European Cup winner Svetlana Pospelova.
“They will all expect Lorraine Fenton or Jearl Miles to take it out, but I’ll be taking it out,” Pittman asserted, revealing her ambition to become only the second Australian after Cathy Freeman to break the 50 seconds mark for the lap.
Despite tripping out of the blocks and putting his hand on the track, fellow Sydneysider Matt Shirvington continued his
impressive progress with third place in Oslo in the 100m in 10.25sec.
Shirvington finished just behind British pair Mark Lewis-Francis (10.12) and Dwain Chambers (10.15), but ahead of Aziz Zakari (10.26), Coby Miller (10.29), Ato Boldon (10.35) and injured Jamaican Asafa Powell (10.93).
Clinton Hill was second in the 400m in 46.09sec. In the pole vault, Viktor Chistiakov was sixth with 5.60m, just 10cm off the win.
Tamsyn Lewis faced an 800m field worthy of a world championship final and finished seventh in 2min 02.98sec.