Source :- PERTH NOW NEWS
Lachlan Kennedy’s failure to make the 100 metres final after one of his worst starts of the season summed up a hugely disappointing night for Australia at the Ultimate Championship in Budapest.
Mackenzie Little’s fourth place in the javelin, via a season’s best throw, was the nearest there was to a high point as Jess Hull and Abbey Caldwell finished well back in the women’s 1500m final while Sarah Billings was a distant seventh in the 800m final.
The 22-year-old Kennedy has enjoyed a dream season, five times going under 10 seconds, including an Oceania record of 9.85 that he set while winning silver behind Cameroon’s Emmanuel Eseme in the Commonwealth Games final.
But Kennedy was left in the blocks in the first of two semi-finals and though he maintained his form well to finish strongly, his fifth place in 10.05 seconds meant he missed out by just two hundredths of a second and frustratingly had to watch the final from afar knowing he could and should have been in it.
In the showdown in front of another capacity 20,000 crowd, American Kenny Bednarek was a surprise winner in 9.85 seconds – matching Kennedy’s best – ahead of Jamaican world champion Oblique Seville (9.90) and American Ronnie Baker (9.93)
In the women’s 100m final, world champion Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, of the US, scorched to victory in 10.62 seconds ahead of Julia Alfred and Sha’Carri Richardson.
Little, who won one of her two world bronzes in the Budapest stadium three years ago, is really a part-time athlete these days as she juggles training with her medical career in Sydney.
The 29-year-old Commonwealth champ launched a big season’s best 63.37m in the third round which looked enough for third place until Colombia’s Flor Denis Ruiz Hurtado hit 64.84m with the final throw of the competition.
That still earned Little $US25,000 ($A35,000) as part of the $US10 million ($A14 million) prize pot that rewards each individual winner with a $US150,000 ($A209,000) pay-day.
China’s remarkable 18-year-old Yan Ziyi had opened with a 68.05m throw – longer than anyone in the field had ever managed, but Japan’s Olympic champion Haruka Kitaguchi unleashed a national record 68.92, more than a metre and a half better than her previous best – to take the title.
Hull was ranked No.1 in the 1500m field, though that was based more on consistency than wins this season.
After finding a season’s best 3:54.73 for third in the Diamond League final last weekend, she was full of confidence and took up her usual position on the shoulder of the leaders in the opening laps.
But when they took off on the final lap, she was unable to respond, fading to ninth in 3:59.97, while Caldwell, who led an Australian clean sweep in the recent Commonwealth Games mile, was never in the mix but finished strongly to take sixth in 3:58.64.
Poland’s Klaudia Kazimierska held off Britain’s Georgia Hunter-Bell to take the win in a thrilling finale.
Australia’s world leader and Olympic champion Nina Kennedy missed the women’s pole vault with a thigh injury and in her absence. American Sandi Morris won it with a 4.90 clearance, as New Zealand’s Imogen Ayri came fourth after clearing 4.80.
Hull will go again in the 5000m on Sunday, along with Commonwealth champion Rose Davies. Also in action on the final night will be Torrie Lewis in the 200m and Cameron Myers in the men’s 1500m.
But the much hyped showdown between former world and Olympic champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Scotland’s mile world record holder Josh Kerr is off after the Norwegian ace cried off with injury after winning Friday’s 5000m.
