Diamond League: Schippers sends warning with 100m win

Dutch athlete primed for Rio as Monaco meet goes ahead after Nice bus attack

MONACO: Dafne Schippers sent out a further broadside to Olympic challengers by storming to victory in the 100m at Monaco’s Diamond League meet which went ahead on Friday despite the deadly truck attack in neighbouring Nice.

At the Stade Louis II, all festivities outside the sporting arena were cancelled out of respect for at least 84 people killed in Thursday’s truck attack in Nice, just 20km away.

Flags flew at half-mast, athletes wore a square of black cloth pinned to their tops and the meeting started with a minute’s silence, with no music played on the stadium tannoys throughout the meet, as is usual.



“Given the circumstances, it’s good the meeting has gone ahead,” Sebastian Coe, president of world athletics’ governing body the IAAF, told AFP.

On the track, less than a month away from the Rio Olympics, recently-crowned European champion Schippers was the only sprinter to dip under the 11sec mark to win the 100m in 10.94sec, second place going to Jamaica’s seven-time Olympic medallist Veronica Campbell-Brown in 11.12.

A high-quality men’s 1500m saw a surprise victor in Ronald Kwemoi, who trumped favourite and fellow Kenyan Asbel Kiprop, Briton Mo Farah coming in fifth.



In a race featuring five of the 10 fastest over the distance of all time, the early pace was extremely fast, but eased off and it came down to a sprint over the last 80 metres.

Kwemoi showed a burst of speed to come through the line in a season’s best of 3min 30.49sec, world silver medallist Elijah Manangoi of Kenya taking second and Olympic champion Taoufik Makhloufi third.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 17^th, 2016.

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