Christian Reif of Germany advances to the men's Long Jump final (© Getty Images)
Daegu, KoreaThe defending champion and the World leader made it through the qualifying rounds of men’s Long Jump when in-stadium competition resumed at the World championships on Thursday morning, but each gave their supporters a surprise.
Neither man, however, provoked as much joy as Kim Deokhyeon, who became Korea’s first in-stadium finalist of the World Championships when his season’s best of 8.02m put him in 11th place overall with 12 men advancing to the final. If the cheering during qualifying is anything to go by, bring your earplugs for the final.
Next on the lists of surprises was Berlin 2009 champion Dwight Phillips. The surprise he delivered was a pleasant one, almost a shock. Phillips had a best this year of only 8.0m7 coming into Daegu, and that was way back in May when he finished fourth in the Shanghai Samsung Diamond League meeting. He used his champion’s wild card to make it into the US team.
So what does Phillips do here other than pop out an 8.32m effort on his opening jump in qualifying, the first man to better the automatic qualifying distance of 8.15m.
Mitchell Watt won that SDL in Shanghai and has been winning pretty well everything since. But his first jump in qualifying yielded a run-through that was measured at 6.43m. Nervous moments, given that he has been experiencing some problems in his left ankle.
Watt shooed the butterflies away with his second effort, an 8.15m, despite having almost 15 centimetres left on the take-off board. He, too, is safely through to the final on Friday night.
Phillips and Watt were the only two men to achieve the automatic distance, though Germany’s Christian Reif (8.13m), Zimbabwe’s Ngonidzashe Makusha and German’s Sebastian Bayer (8.11m for both), found near enough was quite comfortably good enough in the end.
Britain’s pair of world-class jumpers, Chris Tomlinson and Greg Rutherford, fell either side of the divide. Tomlinson got the 12th, and last, place in the final with an 8.02m; Rutherford finished 15th overall with 8.00m.
Other notables to miss out were Berlin 2009 silver medallist Godfrey Mokoena of South Africa, Australia’s world indoor champion Fabrice Lapierre, reigning Olympic champion Irving Saladino of Panama and Salim Sdiri of France.
Len Johnson for the IAAF
