Key Points
- Trayvon Bromell won the Paris Diamond League 100m in 9.91, beating Noah Lyles (9.92).
- Bromell powered through from lane eight; Lyles, the Olympic champion, had a poor start.
- Marcell Jacobs (9.96) and Akani Simbine (9.97) completed the top four.
- Audrey Werro set a women's 800m Diamond League record of 1:53.80, the third-fastest ever.
Noah Lyles got beaten at his own event, by a hundredth of a second, out of the lane nobody wants. Trayvon Bromell won the men's 100m at the Paris Diamond League on June 28 in a season's-best 9.91, running from lane eight to edge Lyles, the reigning Olympic 100m champion, who clocked 9.92 after a sluggish start. Italy's Lamont Marcell Jacobs took third in 9.96 and South Africa's Akani Simbine was fourth in 9.97 — four men inside 9.98 in a single race.
Two 800m records fall
The night's fastest history, though, came over two laps. Switzerland's Audrey Werro won the women's 800m in 1:53.80 — a Diamond League record, a Swiss national record, the world lead, and the third-fastest 800m ever run, the quickest by any woman in 43 years. She finished just shy of Jarmila Kratochvilova's 1:53.28 world record from 1983. Behind her, France's Anaïs Bourgoin set a national record of her own in third (1:55.65), so two national records fell in one race. In the men's 800m, Canada's Marco Arop ran a world-leading 1:41.84 to win, the fastest time in the world this year.
Why it matters
The read: the gap at the top of the men's 100m has closed. Lyles is still the Olympic champion, but losing from a clean field by a hundredth — with a bad start papering over how little separates the top four — says the event no longer runs through him by default. Werro's run is the more startling marker: a 22-year-old is now chasing a 43-year-old world record that the sport had long treated as untouchable. It capped a loud weekend for South African sport, too — Simbine just missed the Paris podium as the nation's footballers featured among a record nine African sides in the World Cup knockouts, the same Saturday the tournament's Round of 32 opened. Simbine and Arop get their next major stage at the Commonwealth Games, which open in Glasgow on July 23 with athletics as the anchor sport on a 10-sport programme.
Source: Olympics.com and Jamaica Observer.
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