Edwards feels exhausted but again wins gold
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Your support makes all the difference.Jonathan Edwards struck gold for the second time in a month to claim victory in the triple jump at the Goodwill Games here yesterday.
The 35-year-old, who was crowned world champion in Edmonton four weeks ago, struggled early on and was only sixth at the halfway stage with an effort of 16.03 metres.
But the Olympic gold medallist, who recorded no jumps with two of his first three efforts, went out to 17.26m with his fourth attempt to take a lead that he did not relinquish.
His winning effort was 66cm short of his World Championship mark but was still more than enough to push the world silver medallist Christian Olsson into second place again with 16.85m. The British No 2, Larry Achike, finished fifth with a leap of 16.36m.
Edwards, who arrived in Brisbane only on Saturday and leaves tomorrow night, admitted his whistle-stop trip left him exhausted. "I had nothing in my legs," he said. "When I missed the first few jumps I started making up all these excuses that I am just too old for all this. I guess it must have been the kangaroo steaks that helped me."
Marion Jones stormed to 100 metres gold with victory over the world champion Zhanna Pintusevich-Block.
In a reversal of last month's surprise finish at the World Championships in Edmonton, the American set a new Games record of 10.84sec.
The Olympic champion was slower out of the blocks than her rival but recovered her form well to relegate the Ukrainian into silver in a time of 11.01. However, Jones' winning time was still 0.02 seconds behind Pintusevich-Block's golden performance in Edmonton.
Jones said: "I felt powerful out there tonight and I dominated in the way that I like to do in the race.
"They say that people always remember your last race so I wanted to end the season well and I did that tonight."
While Pintusevich-Block provided the upset of the World Championships, Olga Yegorova provided the controversy.
The Russian, who was banned from Edmonton after failing a drugs test but then reinstated on a technicality, repeated her 5,000m victory there by taking gold here in 15min 12.22sec, ahead of Berhane Adere in 15:12.97 and Kathy Butler in 15:17.96.
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