Marileidy Paulino pips Eid Nasir at Paris Diamond League
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Bahrain's Salwa Eid Naser and Dominican Republic's Marileidy Paulino during the women's 400m final.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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PARIS – Olympic champion Marileidy Paulino outraced Salwa Eid Naser to win the women’s 400 metres at the Paris Diamond League meet on June 20, while Faith Cherotich won the steeplechase and Grace Stark set a personal best to pip Tobi Amusan in the 100m hurdles.
Dominican Republic’s Paulino needed a season’s best time of 48.81sec, a meet record, as the world champion came from behind to beat Bahrain’s Naser, who took silver at the 2024 Olympics.
“All I focused on was to get through to the finish line feeling strong, although I am not feeling very well, my stomach has been playing up a bit,” Paulino said.
Kenyan Cherotich took bronze at the Paris Olympics behind Ugandan silver medallist Peruth Chemutai in the 3,000m steeplechase, and the pair left the rest of the field behind early in the race.
This time, the 20-year-old Cherotich came out on top as she left her rival behind in the closing metres, with a personal best of 8min 53.37sec, to repeat her wins in Doha and Oslo.
“It’s great that I have already won three Diamond Leagues this season, being the youngest in the field,” she said. “The big goal is the World Championships in Tokyo and I want to win.”
Nigeria’s world-record holder and 2022 world champion Amusan had to settle for second place as American Stark led from the start to win the women’s 100m hurdles in 12.21sec, knocking one-tenth of a second off her personal best.
“I wanted to break that 12.3 so bad, I was really pushing for it in Stockholm,” Stark said.
“I’m just so excited to break 12.3, I really knew I could do it this year.”
In the men's 400m hurdles, Olympic champion Rai Benjamin barely broke sweat in setting a meet record of 46.93sec. He did enough down the home straight to hold off Qatar's Abderrahman Samba, who had set the previous record back in 2018.
“I just took it easy because we just had a really fast race in Stockholm. There was no need to come out and force something, especially because the season is so long,” Benjamin said.
Ukrainian Olympic high jump champion Yaroslava Mahuchikh broke the world record with a leap of 2.10m at last year’s meet, but she managed only 1.97m this time to take second place behind Australia’s Nicola Olyslagers.
The men’s 1,500m may not have been a Diamond League event, but the race had the home crowd on their feet as France’s Azeddine Habz smashed the national record with a world-leading time of 3:27.49. REUTERS
