BEIJING (AP) — On a night when the United States was looking for five medals in the two sprint hurdle races at the world championships, only Aries Merritt delivered — a bronze for the kidney patient that should feel like gold.
The world-record holder will be flying home for a kidney transplant next week but he still outperformed his teammates in the 110-meter hurdles final, challenging Sergei Shubenkov to the end but finishing behind the Russian and Hansle Parchment of Jamaica.
Defending champion David Oliver banged hard into two early hurdles and finished seventh.
In the women’s 100 hurdles, the American team was thinking of a sweep. In the end, they were swept out of the medals, with 2008 Olympic champion Dawn Harper-Nelson crashing and Kendra Harrison getting a false start that disqualified her in the semifinals.
In the final, defending champion Brianna Rollins banged into the first hurdle and never recovered, as Danielle Williams gave Jamaica gold ahead of Cindy Rodeler of Germany.
In the 200, Dafne Schippers completed an incredible switch from heptathlete to sprinter by winning the world title, denying Jamaica its fourth gold medal in the two fastest races on the track.
Two years after winning bronze in the punishing seven-event discipline, she swept past Jamaican sprinters Elaine Thompson and Veronica Campbell-Brown with a perfect dip for the line to add gold to the silver she won in the 100.
She crossed in 21.63 to beat the 28-year-old championship record by .11 seconds and set the fourth fastest time in history.
Ashton Eaton, coming back after a two-year absence, needed only 10.23 seconds to establish himself again as the favorite to win the decathlon. That’s how long it took the American to run the 100 meters in a championship decathlon record on Friday at the start of the two-day competition.
And at the end of the first day, he set a world decathlon record over the 400 meters to show he is in shape to challenge the overall world record in the 10-event discipline on Saturday.
He finished the 400 in 45.00 seconds, slashing .68 seconds off the mark he shared with 1968 Olympic champion Bill Toomey.
Eaton also won the long jump with a leap of 7.88 meters, and then had good showings in the shot put and high jump to put him in a dominating position after five events.
Eaton leads with 4,703 points, 173 points more than Damian Warner of Canada.
Also, Tianna Bartoletta won her second long jump world title, 10 years after her first. The American took the lead for the first time in the final when she jumped 7.14 meters with her last attempt.
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