Usain Bolt and David Rudisha were both back in action yesterday (14th March) in preparation for this year’s outdoor season.
Bolt, the six-time Olympic champion and double World Record holder for the 100m and 200m, has not run competitively since the 23rd August 2014 in what was only one of two races for him last season, one of which being the last leg of the men’s 4×100 relay team in Glasgow.
His time he posted yesterday of 46.37 was nothing to shout about, especially with 15 year old Jamaican Christopher Taylor running a world age group record of 45.69 with ease last week.
It was a fairly easy win for Bolt as he led the field with some 200m to go. With a 400m personal best of 45.28 from 2007, it showed that he was only in his preparation phase for the World Championships this summer in Beijing.
The 800m World Record holder and Olympic Champion Rudisha won his first outdoor race since the 28th August in true world-class fashion.
The Kenyan was taken through the bell by a pace-maker at 50.94 to set him up nicely for a quick time. Rudisha is known for taking his races out and running them from the front and that’s exactly what he did as he pulled away from the field down the finishing straight to a time of one minute forty-five seconds.
Neither of the performances were exhilarating by any means but if there were any cobwebs to be dusted off, they look like they have been.
On the other end of the scale, the 20km race walk World Record fell again. Japan’s Yusuke Suzuki clocked one hour, sixteen minutes and thirty-three seconds to shatter the previous World Record by 26 seconds.
The previous World Record had only been held for a week by Frenchman Yohann Diniz.
Suzuki’s win at the Asian Race Walking Championships was his third national title.
