Big first for shot putter

Odayne Richards won a historic shot put gold medal at the 26th World University Games in Shenzhen, China, yesterday.

On the opening day of competition forathletics, Richards bagged the country's first-ever world title in the shot put event by heaving a big new personal best 19.93 metres to hold off Soslan Tsyrikhov of Russia (19.80m) and Mason Finley of the USA (19.72m).

Richards, a student of the University of Technology, improved his personal best from 19.54m, making his gold medal throw in the third round of the competition.

Smallest man in the field

According to reports from the Jamaican camp in China, many fans in the stadium were stunned as during theintroductionof the 12-man line-up for the finals, Richards was obviously the smallest man in the field.

Richards also created history by not only winning the first athletics medal for the Games, but also the first-ever medal won in the brand new main stadium of the Universidade.

Before Richards' gold, Jamaica had some good performances on the track. Peter Matthews ran 46.37 seconds to lead all qualifiers into the semi-finals of the 400m. Jacques Harvey and Carrie Russell both looked good in the quarter-final rounds of the men's and women's 100m.

Harvey looked easy running, clocking 10.25 seconds to lead the qualifiers for the semi- finals ahead of Ogho Egwero of Nigeria, who ran 10.28, and Ronalds Arajs of Latvia, who did 10.29.

Harvey will run in semi-final heat one set to go off at 6:45 p.m. today (5:45 a.m. Ja time). If Harvey wins gold, Jamaica will truly have all 100m men sprint titles at the same time in all world events.

Russell, 11.32, is the fastest female 100m qualifier and will run in heat one of the semis at 6:30 p.m. (5:30 a.m. Ja time). The finals are set for 8:05 and 8:20 p.m., respectively.