Ultimate Championship Day 3 Highlights
The final day brought 7 individual track finals (plus 4 semi-finals), a relay, and 4 field events in a 2 hr 40 mins program. The evening opened with the women’s 400 m, won by Jasmine Jones, with Dalilah Muhammad (former World record holder, double Olympic and double World champion) getting as much attention for her last-ever race. Remarkably, she told the media she never really enjoyed the stress of racing.
Alison dos Santos beat Rai Benjamin and Karsten Warholm to win the men’s race. Dos Santos really has made the event his own. Warholm was also running a relay an hour and a quarter later!
Marco Arop dominated the 800m only for Djamel Sedjati to storm past him on the closing meters. Emmanuel Wanyonyi was third. Likina Amebaw won the women’s race, making her the first of four Ethiopians in the top five.
Josh Kerr won a 1500m race that included Cameron Myers, Cole Hocker, Yared Nuguse, Timothy Cheruiyot, Jake Wightman, and Isaac Nader, in what might have been the race of the day, but several had a claim to that title.
For drama and excitement, nothing beats a 4×400 relay, and a mixed relay only adds to it. USA won, and the pope is still a Catholic and an American, but Charlotte Henrich stole the show on the final leg, taking the baton in fourth place and bringing team GB home in second. Net Netherlands‘e van der Schoot was gaining on her, but Charlotte had enough left to hold the second place she had gained.
Kenneth Bednarek won the 200m in a world-leading 19.52 to complete the sprint double, in a race in which the first five ran sub-20. Melissa Jefferson-Wooden also ran a world-leading 21.47 to finish just ahead of Gabby Thomas in the women’s 200 m. Amy Hunt ran a season’s-best 22.10 in what we think was her 47th race of the season. The semi-finals saw Shaunae Miller-Uibo disqualified for a lane infringement.
Gianmarco Tamberi put on an epic performance, entertaining the crowd at that end of the stadium with a 2.37 jump. He may be 34, but the old dog still has life! Rumesh Pathirage won the men’s 100 m with 91.09, by a margin of nearly 5 meters. Saly Sarr of Senegal won the triple jump by just 2 centimeters.
Another full stadium for an entertaining evening of track and field. There are issues with the process, but generally I would pronounce the Ultimate a success
