YOHAN BLAKE beat fellow Jamaican Asafa Powell to win the men’s 100 metres in a personal best time of 9.82 seconds at the Weltklasse Diamond League meet in Zurich, Switzerland today.
Blake’s 21-year-old Jamaican stumbled slightly out of the blocks and had no wind assistance on a still night, yet ran .07 seconds faster than ever before.
His dash was the fourth fastest legal time this year, .04 behind Powell’s 9.78 at the Lausanne Diamond League meet in June.
Powell finished second in 9.95, though he was nursing a hip injury that caused him to miss the world championships last week in Daegu, South Korea.
Fellow Jamaicans Michael Frater, 10.06, and Nesta Carter, 10.12, were fourth and respectively.
Powell, who previously suggested Blake was just a “boy” after beating him in the Jamaica National Trials in June, yesterday acknowledged that Blake had stepped up to the top ranks after wining the IAAF World Championship title in Daegu, South Korea.
“He’s there, he’s won the World Championship,” said Powell, who ran a world-leading 9.78 at Lausanne in June, before being sidelined by a hip flexor problem. “It’s still very sore. But I’m here to compete,” he said.
Usain Bolt skipped the meet — dubbed the ‘world championships in two hours’ — having earlier cited his “strenuous schedule” in Daegu.
Blake won the worlds gold medal in 9.92 after his training partner Bolt was disqualified for a false start.
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