BEIJING: Liu Hong won the women’s 20-km walk yesterday to hand China its first gold medal of the World Athletics Championships, as defending champion Ashton Eaton took control of the decathlon.
The morning after Usain Bolt’s emphatic 200m win at the Bird’s Nest stadium, Liu gave home fans something to cheer when she headed a Chinese one-two in the walk with “little sister” Lu Xiuzhi.
The pair broke early and built up a massive lead in Beijing’s scorching morning heat, with Liu coming home for gold in one hour 27.45 minutes with Lu right behind her. Ukraine’s Lyudmyla Olyanovska took bronze, 28 seconds behind.
“There was a lot of pressure but I was confident in this mission,” said Liu, who added that she had struck a pact with Lu, her junior by seven years, not to race each other in the final kilometres.
“When we hit the front at the start I didn’t think we were going that quick but nobody followed us, so we just carried on. It’s a dream to win the gold.”
After the US medal tally was boosted on Thursday by golds from triple jumper Christian Taylor and 400m runner Allyson Felix, it was another of their star athletes who took to the Bird’s Nest on Friday in the shape of multi-discipline specialist Eaton.
Reigning
The world record-holder and defending champion, also reigning Olympic and two-time world indoor champion, timed 10.23sec in the opening 100m before leaping a best of 7.88m in the long jump, both leading performances.
Eaton, whose Canadian wife Brianne Theisen Eaton claimed silver behind Jessica Ennis-Hill in the women’s heptathlon, then managed a best of 14.53m in the shot put, won the long jump with a leap of 7.88m and a good outing in the high jump as well to lead with 3,643 points, 56 more than Damian Warner of Canada.
Although Eaton is back on the track, American teammate Trey Hardee, a two-time world champion, is out with a lower back injury he sustained in the long jump.
Instead of Hardee, Warner is likely to be Eaton’s toughest rival. After four events, Kurt Felix of Grenada was third with 3,518 points.
Last season, Eaton took a break from the most bruising and draining competition in the sport and centreded on experimenting with the 400 hurdles — which is not even a decathlon discipline. He did not complete a decathlon this year before coming to Beijing.