A flat-looking Usain Bolt raced his worst 100m in three years here on Friday, still managing to claim victory after he recovered sufficiently from a dreadful start and a limp drive phase. The Jamaican double Olympic sprint champion clocked 10.04 seconds, some distance off the 9.7sec time he was seeking to build on his season-opening 9.82sec earlier this month. A false start played its part, throwing a distinctly average field into automatic play-safe mode.
Into a -0.8m/s headwind, Bolt grimaced his way from the 50m mark and did enough to beat home veteran Kim Collins of St Kitts and St Nevis (10.19sec) with American Darivs Patton third (10.22). “I haven’t run that badly since a meet in Canada in 2009,” said a noticeably downbeat Bolt, also the world record holder in both the 100 and 200m (9.58 and 19.19sec). “That’s reality, a very bad day at the starting blocks. When I was in the back warming up, I did some starts and I was flying. “But I ran out and didn’t get going, couldn’t generate speed in middle of race so I had to work hard to get some speed up.” Elsewhere on the track, defending Olympic champion Pamela Jelimo of Kenya fired a broadside at South African pretender Caster Semenya with a convincing victory in the women’s 800m.
