Some things will always feel familiar at the World Athletics Championships. A Jamaican winning the men’s 100 metres, Oblique Seville doing the honours this time as the 24-year-old upset the two-time defending champion Noah Lyles from the US.
Watching from inside Tokyo’s National Stadium was Usain Bolt, the last Jamaican to win this title, and Seville was suitably Bolt-esque in his style of victory, running a lifetime best of 9.77 seconds to deny countryman Kishane Thompson, who won silver (9.82) and Lyles in third (9.89).
Equally familiar was an American winning the women’s 100m, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden living up to her billing as the fastest all season as she clocked a championship record of 10.61. Olympic champion Julien Alfred had to settle for the third, the St Lucian training partner of Rhasidat Adeleke edged out by Jamaica’s Tina Clayton, who won silver in 10.76.
Still, there was something unfamiliar about a European-born runner winning the men’s 10,000m, as Jimmy Gressier from France took that honour in an old-school upset after 25 laps of running – and a mad dash for the line.
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Italy’s Alberto Cova won this inaugural title in 1983, then the Olympic title in a year later, the last man born outside of Africa to win any global 10,000m title.
For the 25-year-old Gressier, already revered in France for his fearless style of running, everything had to go right, and it did – the last lap burn suiting him perfectly as he sprinted from fifth to first in the last 100m.
His winning time of 28:55.77 was the slowest in World Championship history, but Gressier couldn’t care less as he outsprinted Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha to the line, Sweden’s Andreas Almgren winning bronze, clocking 28:56.02. Ireland’s Efrem Gidey was right in the mix until the last 2km, eventually finishing 19th in 29:30.37.
Earlier on Sunday there was a familiar sight too as the two best women marathon runners in the world, Peres Jepchirchir from Kenya and Tigat Assefa from Ethiopia, ran side-by-side for the last 10km.
Once inside the stadium, Jepchirchir blew past Assefa down the homestretch, winning in 2:24:43, two seconds ahead of the Ethiopian. There was also the sight of Fionnuala McCormack producing her best run on the global stage, powering through to finish ninth.
Defying the heat and humidity, McCormack paced her effort to absolution perfection, and once again proved that age is no barrier, as the 40-year-old mother of three ran herself into the top 10 for the first time at a global championship.
A year after she also became the first Irish woman to compete in five Olympics, finishing 27th in Paris, McCormack adopted her usual cautious start, sitting back in 33rd after 10km, and in 24th at 20km, which she passed in 1:11:21. From there she continued to pass runners all the way to the finish, boldly taking advantage of some tough hills on the last approach to the stadium, where she crossed the line ninth in 2:30:16.
“I’m pleasantly surprised,” said McCormack, who turns 41 this month. “It’s nice to get into the top 10. I picked off as many people as I could, and everyone who I could see in front of me I think I caught. There wasn’t a whole lot more I could do out there.”
There was an unfamiliar delight too in the face of Julia Paternain from Uruguay, after she won the bronze medal in 2:27:23. Uruguay had never previously won a World Championship medal of any colour in any event.
McCormack’s performance was outstanding in its own right, coming 18 years after the Wicklow woman competed in her first World Championships in Osaka, also in Japan, when she ran the 3,000m steeplechase. Next stop for her is the New York Marathon in November.
