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There are six medals up for grabs on day eight of the 2019 Athletics World Championships in Doha, with the USA looking likely to add to their medal haul.
Every morning during the championships, Standard Sport will be bringing you a preview of the day's action.
US rivalry comes to a head in women’s 400m hurdles
Things were all geared up for this to be the year Sydney McLaughlin became the face of American athletics. Making her mark by breaking into the top-ten on the world all-time list while still a college student on the NCAA circuit, McLaughlin was at the centre of one of the biggest commercial tug of wars in athletics history before eventually signing with New Balance in October last year to go pro. The stage was set.
And then Dalilah Muhammad broke the world record. As America lapped up its new poster girl, the defending Olympic and world champion somehow arrived at US trials under the radar, and delivered a stunning upset to win in 52.20, the fastest-time ever, with McLaughlin a distant second.
Despite that, McLaughlin still comes here as favourite, having reversed the form in the recent Diamond League Final. World records are, by their very nature, often anomalous, but Muhammad’s looks exceptionally so – her second-fastest run of the season was almost a second-and-a-half slower.
Indeed, any time the pair have gone head-to-head this season and Muhammad has not broken the world record, McLaughlin has come out on top.
They look streets ahead of the rest in tonight’s 400m hurdles final, having both won their semi-finals without breaking sweat, but who will take gold?
World Athletics Championships: Day seven
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American hopes with Kerley after Norman exit
There was a huge and frankly bizarre upset in the semi-finals of the men’s 400m as world leader Michael Norman finished down in seventh and failed to make tonight’s final.
That’s shifted the narrative around his US teammate Fred Kerley, who was expected to be the main challenger but now goes in as favourite, half-a-second clear of the rest of the field on season’s bests.. The Americans have already taken gold in the men’s 100m, 200m and 800m, so if he could claim his maiden world title it would complete a sweep of sorts.
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It will be no procession though. Former world and Olympic champion Kirani James has been a rare presence on the track over the past two seasons as he battled Graves’ disease, and arrived in Doha having raced just once all year, but has looked good through the rounds, as has Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas, the only other man to really threaten a sub-44 second clocking so far this year.
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Britain chasing more sprint relay glory
Britain’s sprint relay squads get their campaigns underway in the 4x100m heats today, and it should be a ‘get the baton round and qualify’ job for both men and women, though it will be interesting to see whether they take a chance and rest the likes of Dina Asher-Smith and Adam Gemili, with both having had busy campaigns so far.
Looking ahead to the finals – touch wood – it is the men’s team who are defending a world title, and you’d give them a decent chance of defending that crown if they’re at their scintillating best in the changeovers, but it is perhaps the women’s team who have the best chance of taking gold, particularly if the spate of dropouts in the 200m don’t return to their respective squads.
And the rest…
Local favourite Mutaz Essa Barshim produced a clean card and a season’s best 2.29m clearance in qualifying to reignite hope that he may yet be able to crown a stop-start season by defending his world high jump title on home soil.
The men’s 3000m steeplechase final should bring in the terrific Ethiopian and Kenyan fans that lit up the stadium earlier in the week. Conselsus Kipruto, the defending champion, cut a very animated figure in his conducting of the field in the heats, but looked in decent shape. He has three other Kenyans, plus three Ethiopians, and the likes of Morocco’s Soufiane El Bakkali to contend with.
Britain’s Zak Seddon ran an incredibly brave race to squeeze into a fastest loser spot, and will go in his first world final.