Australia’s fastest woman Torrie Lewis has made another stunning sprint breakthrough in the run-up to the Olympics, beating the world 100m champion and achieving a shock 200m triumph at the inaugural meeting of the Diamond League of the season in China.
On a night in Xiamen, when Armand Duplantis was setting another pole vault world record of 6.24 metres, the Australian star topped the card with his brilliant half-round victory over two American stars.
Following her impressive home campaign, when she became the Australian 100m record holder with her 11.10sec run in Canberra in January, 19-year-old Lewis made an individual Diamond League debut to remember on Saturday .
She took a completely unexpected victory from lane nine, beating her idol, 100m world champion Sha’Carri Richardson, and Tamara Clark after a strong start.
“You are welcome!” “Said the young woman from Newcastle beaming, when after the final photo she was asked if she believed before the race that she could win.
With a time of 22.96 to beat Richardson by just 0.03 seconds, while Clark clocked 23.01, England’s Lewis celebrated the second-fastest 200 meters of her career.
It also brought her closer to Raelene Boyle’s 56-year-old under-20 Australian record, as well as the Olympic qualifying standard of 22.57.
“It was very surreal to beat Sha’Carri. I didn’t even realize I had beaten them until I watched the replay and was like, ‘Holy shit!’ How surreal!” Lewis said.
“My goal was to hold on as long as I could. I was in lane nine, so I knew everyone would be 50 or 60 meters ahead of me, but I just wanted to do the best I could.
“I came here straight from nationals, knowing this was my opponents’ first match of the season, so I knew I had an advantage, but I wasn’t entirely sure because I had never competed against those athletes before.”
The Australian couple goes under 4 minutes in 1,500 m
There were other Australian performances to savour, with Georgia Griffith and Sarah Billings becoming the fourth and fifth Australian women respectively to record sub-four minute times in the 1500m, while Linden Hall joined them.
Griffith clocked 3 minutes 59.04 seconds to place sixth, followed by Billings, who clocked a seven-second personal best of 3:59.59 in ninth, while Hall clocked 4:00.71 in tenth. All were within the Olympic qualifying standard of 4:02.50.
But it was a disappointing return to international action for Peter Bol, who could only finish 11th out of 12 finishers with a time of 1:47.02 in the 800 meters in his first race abroad since last year’s world championships in Budapest.
Later, Canadian Marco Arop achieved the world’s fastest two-lap time this year with his 1:43.61 victory.
It was also a tough night for Olympic finalist Stewie McSweyn, who narrowly missed the qualifying time of 13:05.00 for Paris and finished 10th in 13:05.18.
Joel Baden surpassed 2.24 m in the high jump, but a failure in the 2.20 m prevented him from reaching the podium in the countdown in an event won by the American Shelby McEwan.
Another Diamond League debutant, Ellie Beer, finished fifth in the 400 meters, with a time of 52.36 behind Dominican winner Marileidy Paulino, while Australian record holder Kathryn Mitchell, seeking a fourth Olympic appearance, finished sixth in javelin with a throw of 55.57 meters behind local winner Qianqian Dai.
AAP
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