Individual world champions, Noah Lyles and Sha’Carri Richardson, anchored the United States to a 4×100 metres relay double on a busy penultimate night of the World Athletics Championships.
For Lyles, it completed a hat-trick of gold medals in Budapest following on from his 100m and 200m success.
Christian Coleman, Fred Kerley and Brandon Carnes set him up to bring the US home in dominant fashion in the men’s relay, clocking a world-leading time of 37.38.
Olympic champion, Marcell Jacobs, of Italy raced the second leg in the silver medal effort of 37.62, and Jamaica completed the top three in 37.76, staving off challenges from Britain and Japan.
The men’s success was followed by a Championships record for the US in the women’s 4x100m relay.
Tamari Davis, Twanisha Terry and Gabrielle Thomas ran the first three legs before Richardson held off the 200m world champion Shericka Jackson of Jamaica to power her team to gold in 41.03.
Jamaica were second in 41.21, with Britain third in 41.97.
The relays were a sweet tonic after they had been disqualified from the women’s 4x400m relay heats because anchor runner, Alexis Holmes, was outside the changeover zone when she belatedly received the baton from Quanera Hayes.
It took their gold medal tally for the night up to three following on from Chase Ealey’s women’s shot put title defence.
Ealey dominated the competition from her first attempt of 20.35 metres, and improved it to 20.43 on her fifth.
Sarah Mitton of Canada earned silver with 20.08m, and Olympic champion, Gong Lijiao, of China took bronze with 19.69m.
Auriol Dongmo of Portugal also threw a 19,69m, but her second-best attempt of 19.63m was short of Gong’s 19.67m.
Sweden’s Armand Duplantis was another who earned a comfortable title defence in Budapest, winning the men’s pole vault final with a first-time 6.10m clearance. –Insidethegames
