Sally Pearson roars back to win world championships 100m hurdles gold, Usain Bolt fails to finish

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This was published 6 years ago

Sally Pearson roars back to win world championships 100m hurdles gold, Usain Bolt fails to finish

By Michael Gleeson and London
Updated

Sally Pearson is world champion again. After three lost years ruined by injury, Pearson has completed the most remarkable comeback to win gold at the London world championships and in doing so has been elevated among the greatest Australian athletes ever.

Pearson now stands alongside Catherine Freeman as one of Australia's best modern track athletes after adding a second world championship gold to a silver in Moscow and her Olympic gold and silver.

This victory, she admits, is as sweet as any after the journey she has undertaken to get here - four years lost from major championships, putting aside the lesser Commonwealth Games, ruined by serious calf, Achilles and hamstring injuries as well as a wrist shattered in a fall.

Beyond that she sacked her last coach and on the day the athletics began at the Rio Olympics last year she decided to coach herself and sat down in her Gold Coast home to write out a plan to get her back to the top of the world. On the eve of her 31st birthday she arrived in London as a relative outsider and won gold.

Australia's Sally Pearson celebrates after winning the gold medal in the women's 100m hurdles final.

Australia's Sally Pearson celebrates after winning the gold medal in the women's 100m hurdles final.Credit: Matthias Schrader

"Every single emotion that you can hold in your body just came out when I crossed that finish line. It wasn't surprise, it wasn't shock. I was just proud, so proud of what I had done to get here," she said after winning the gold in 12.59s from American Dawn Harper-Nelson and Germany's Pamela Dutkiewicz.

She crossed the line screaming "oh my God" repeatedly after surged towards the crowd to celebrate, looking for her mum and husband.

"I've worked so hard, I don't know what has just happened out there. I'm so tired but I'm sure it will sink in soon," said Pearson,

Having overcome injuries and coaching Person also had to beat the pre-race favourite, world record holder Kendra Harrison from America.

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"I certainly wasn't the fastest in the field today but I definitely beat the fastest and I am the World Champion," she said.

While the world watched for a race in two between Pearson and Harrison, Pearson knew the biggest threat would be Harper-Nelson who won gold ahead of Pearson in silver at the Beijing Olympics and who won silver to Pearson's gold at the London Olympics.

Harper-Nelson, who served a three month drug ban earlier this year, said she crossed the line thinking she might have won then looked and saw Pearson.

"I was like 'Of course it's Sally'. To cross the line it was like 'OK Sally (got gold) but silver is good. This silver is going to taste like gold tonight,"she said.

Pearson said her outsider, or challenger, status here made it feel a little sweeter than when she won her first world championship in Daegu six years ago.

"I think so, I went to Daegu and I was winning, right from a year out I was going to win the world championships," she said

"Every medal is different and this one sure is very different to the rest of them."

Pearson's success preceded a heartbreaking end to the career of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, the Olympic champion appearing to strain a hamstring in the final leg of the men's 4x100m relay. He failed to finish and Great Britain won gold.

After taking the baton from his teammate Yohan Blake, Bolt began to gather speed only to pull up and shout in pain about 60m from the finish line.

It was hardly the farewell party that Bolt, the greatest sprinter in history, had in mind when he decided to make this meet the last of his career.

His injury - later confirmed as severe cramp - would normally have cast a pall over the rest of the race, but it has been a frustrating meet for Britain, the host country. And with Bolt on the ground and the Jamaicans out of contention, the gold came down to a sprint for the finish between Christian Coleman of the United States and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake of Britain.

Britain won by 0.05 seconds, finishing in 37.47 seconds to the Americans' 37.52. As the official results flashed on the big screen, the crowd cheered wildly for Britain's second gold medal of these championships.

Meanwhile, Bolt's teammates rushed to help him as he lay on the track.

With AAP

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