Athletics
Caster Semenya claims another SA record in Europe
Semenya smashes national 400m record in sensational run
Caster Semenya smashed the women's national 400m record, but that was good enough only for second place at the IAAF Continental Cup in Ostrava, Czech Republic, yesterday.
The competition pits four continental teams against each other, and Semenya, who is the favourite for the women's 800m today, produced a sensational run in the one-lap race.
She clocked 49.62sec behind favourite Salwa Eid Naser of the Asia-Pacific region, who cruised to victory in 49.32, her second-fastest time of 2018.
The official SA record was the 50.05 Heide Seyerling ran while finishing sixth at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
Semenya, however, improved on that at the farcical African championships in Nigeria in August when she clocked 49.96 on a track that looked too warped and bumpy to allow for any official statistics.
No matter - Semenya put that matter to rest in convincing fashion.
Naser of Bahrain, the Diamond League champion in the 400m, had won every race over this distance this season except one, when she was downed by Olympic champion Shaunae Miller-Uibo of Bahamas.
Miller-Uibo, the fastest 400m runner this year, has focused most of her efforts on the 200m this season.
Still, Semenya wasn't even supposed to beat American Shakima Wimbley, the second-fastest runner in the field who had the advantage over the South African over the first half of the race.
Wimbley, in lane six, was almost level with Semenya, in the lane outside her, as they entered the back bend.
But by the time they hit the home straight, Semenya was far ahead of Wimbley and well behind Naser.
The South African star closed the gap, but never threatened for the lead.
Ironically, it's only the third race this year that Semenya has not won.
She finished sixth in a 1,500m Diamond League race in July, and she was second in an 800m heat at the African championships.
The second place yesterday earned Semenya $15,000 and she will pocket an additional $30,000 if she wins the 800m event.
And with the $50,000 she won at the Diamond League finals, her bank account would have been boosted by R1.45m in the past 11 days.
Semenya would have had a good chance of winning the 1,500m had she been eligible for that race, although Africa cleaned up anyway, taking first and third.
Shelby Houlihan of the US ran hard to sandwich herself in second spot between Africa's contingent of Winny Jebet and Rababe Arafi.
But Jebet's winning time of 4min 16.01sec would have been well within Semenya's reach; a tactical race invariably plays into her last-lap kick.
While the women's 400m was fast, some of the shorter sprints were surprisingly slow on a track on which Wayde van Niekerk achieved his 300m world best last year.
Marie-Josée Ta Lou scored Africa's first victory of the competition, winning the women's 100m in 11.14sec as she edged Europe's Dina Asher-Smith by two-hundredths of a second.
That was her third-worst time of the season and Asher-Smith's fourth-slowest.
Ncincilili Titi was the first man to pick up points for the African team, as modest as they might have been.
He finished a distant sixth in the men's 200m in which defending champion Alonso Edward of the Americas downed world champion Ramil Guliyev of Europe...
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