Winging in the rain: Olyslagers splashes to Diamond win
Ian Chadband |
On a night fit for ducks in Lausanne, Nicola Olyslagers has defied the teeming rain to swan over the bar with just one bound and win her third Diamond League high jump in a row.
The incessant downpour made it a fairly miserable night for athletes at the Swiss venue on Wednesday (Thursday AEST), but you still couldn’t keep the smile from two-time Olympic silver medallist Olyslagers’ face as she pulled off a successful gamble to share a three-way victory.
Deciding to be the last jumper to enter the competition at 1.91m, Olyslagers feared the worst the more the track got deluged.
“This is a very wet competition, so I decided to be bold and start high, like I usually do when it’s good conditions, and when the rain started pouring down, then I was thinking, ‘have I made the right decision?'” she reflected afterwards.
“But in the end, it worked, because the one jump was the winning jump.”
Indeed, that proved her only clearance of the night as she went on to share first-place with Germany’s Christina Honsel – who had three successful jumps – and Poland’s Maria Zodzik, who had four. They all failed at 1.94m.
Olyslagers’ perennial domestic rival Eleanor Patterson also cleared 1.91m but a first-time failure at that height meant the other three shared the spoils.
Ukraine’s Olympic champion Yaroslava Mahuchikh had decided to quit the competition after two missed attempts at 1.86m and 1.91m, feeling it wasn’t worth the risk with a wet run-up.
The 28-year-old Olyslagers is in fine form leading into the world championships, her major target of the year, but success in the season-long Diamond League, the finals of which take place in Zurich next week, is another incentive.
While Britain’s Olympic champion Keely Hodgkinson continued her comeback to racing with a meeting 800m record of one minute 55.69 seconds, Australia’s new national record holder Claudia Hollingsworth had to settle for seventh in 1:58.81.
Liam Adcock (7.50m) was eighth in the long jump won by Uzbekistan’s Anvar Anvarov (7.84), while Jack Rayner splashed home in 16th in the 5000m in 13:31.22.
In a non-Diamond League event, Aussie speedster Torrie Lewis won the 100m A final in 11.31sec.
In the meet’s big 100m clash, Olympic champion Noah Lyles was beaten again by Oblique Seville, with the Jamaican’s  9.87 run hugely impressive in the conditions. Lyle clocked 10.02 in his third straight 100m loss on the Diamond League circuit.
“We can perform even in hurricanes,” Seville beamed.
AAP
