Being polite, this was not the toughest of qualifying conditions to progress to Friday's semi-finals: from 37 entrants, the first six from each of the three heats, plus the six fastest losers would go through.
Morocco’s Mariem Alaoui Selsoulj took the first heat, showing a useful turn of pace over the final half-lap to clock 4min 09.05sec ahead of Bahrain's Maryam Jamal and Lidia Chojecka, of Poland.
Sarah Jamieson (AUS) had done the early work in this heat, reeling off 66sec laps, and her reward would be one of the fastest loser slots, as she was run out of the top six places in the final strides of this heat; Nataliya Pantelyeva (RUS), one of the fastest women in the world this year, and Tatyana Holovchenko, who finished behind the Australian but still qualified, thus owed Jamieson a debt of gratitiude.
Yuliya Fomenko (RUS) won the next heat, which despite a dawdled opening circuit, she still brought home in 4:09.57 from Ukraine's Viola Lishchynska (4:10.03).
Again, the virtue of putting in some of the pace work repaid dividends here, this time for Spain's Dolores Checa, who took a fastest loser place from her seventh place in 4:11.24.
The third heat was won in 4:10.45 by Yelena Soboleva, the Russian striding away from her rivals over the final 150m, with Kenya’s Viola Kibiwott second.
Marina Muncan, of Serbia, eighth in this heat in 4:11.24, snatched the sixth and final fastest loser's spot.
Osaka 2007 News Team/sd
