Chris Musumba And IAAF
21 September 2008
Nairobi — It was the perfect way to bring down the curtain on a successful year as men 800m Olympic champion Wilfred Bungei put the icing on the cake with a win at the fourth annual Shanghai Golden Grand Prix on Saturday.
The 800m race was one of the highlights of the evening. The event designated as the start of the 2009 IAAF World Athletics Tour, a qualifying event for the World Athletics Final set for September, in Thessaloniki, Greece.
The athletes competing at the meet got a head start in qualifying for next year's final. An overall season record, three personal season bests and two personal best records were recorded.
The shining star was Beijing Olympic gold medallist Wilfred Bungei who has had not had an impressive performance since his victory in Beijing in August in the Golden league and Grand Prix races he competed in Europe.
Showed classHowever, he put that behind him as he yet again showed his class and looked strong and impressive heading the field through the finish line in a season's best 1:44.63.
Second place went to Poland's Pavel Czapiewski (a season-best 1:44.96) and in third was another Kenyan Geoffrey Rono, in a personal-best 1:45.13. Pace setter Geoffrey Kibet did his job and led the race at the 400m at 50.83 before opting out.
In 5000m race, nine of the sixteen runners in the field came from Kenya, including two pacesetters.
But it was not easy victory for the Kenyan as they almost lost the victory, with Levi Matebo edging past James Kwalia of Qatar in the last second. Matebo's winning 13:16.26 clocking was just .03 seconds ahead of Kwalia.
Ethiopians Sahle Warga Betona and the Olympic 10,000m silver medallist Sileshi Sihine finished third and fourth, respectively (13:16.49 and 13:16.60).
Thomas Longosiwa was fifth in 13:18.80 ahead of Mike Kigen (13:20.93), , Silas Kipruto (13:21.70), Boniface Kiprop 13:22.75 and Daniel Komen 13:24.39 respectively.
Unstoppable
In women 1500m, Gelete Burka of Ethiopia won comfortably in 4:02.30, five seconds ahead of runner-up Anna Mischenko of Ukraine (4:07.89) and Helen Clitheroe of Great Britain (4:08.36).
Unstoppable Russia's Yelena Isinbayeva won solidly but the audience did not get the spectacular performance they were hoping for in pole vault.
She faltered on her first attempt at 4.60m, normally a pedestrian height for the World record holder, and cleared it with a slight touch on the bar with her second attempt.
Tatyana Polnova of Russia took second place, clearing 4.50m on her first attempt, and Caroline Hingst of Germany was third after taking two tries to clear 4.50m.
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