Greg Rutherford hits repeat in Melbourne
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Your support makes all the difference.Britain's Olympic long jump gold medallist Greg Rutherford repeated his Games triumph over Australian Mitchell Watt at the IAAF Melbourne World Challenge yesterday.
Rutherford won with a fourth-round leap of 8.10 metres, while London silver medallist Watt jumped 8.01 to finish second. Fellow Australian and reigning Commonwealth Games champion Fabrice Lapierre was third with 7.99.
"Every competitor always wants to win. Mitch is a friend of mine, so it is not like a bad competition ever," said Rutherford. "Ultimately, he wants to beat me and I want to beat him, but we are always still mates.
"An 8.10 isn't anything massively special, but blimey, we are in the early part of the year, and waking up this morning I didn't expect to be able to jump that well so early."
The 100m race was supposed to feature former world record-holder Asafa Powell of Jamaica, but he withdrew earlier in the week with a hamstring injury, the same ailment that forced him to pull up in the Olympic 100m final. Six-time Australian champion Josh Ross took victory, while the American Wallace Spearmon, who had earlier won the 200m, finished in fourth.
Calvin Smith Jnr of the United States won the 400m in 46.25sec to maintain some family racing history in Australia.
His win came 28 years after his father, the former 100m world record-holder Calvin Smith Snr, won the 100m at the 1985 Australia Games in Melbourne.
The newly crowned world cross-country champion, Japhet Korir of Kenya, won the 5,000m in 13min 31.94sec, ahead of the home favourite Liam Adams.
Other international men's winners included James Magut of Kenya in the 1500m, Justin Gaymon in the 400m hurdles and his fellow American Dusty Jonas in the high jump.
Susan Kuijken of Holland won the women's 1500m.
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