Tobi Amusan signed the best time of the year in a key comeback before Paris

From mid-2023 to this point, Tobi Amusan’s sports career turned sinuous and with permanent ups and downs in the 100-meter hurdles. In July, she received a provisional suspension for failing to submit to three anti-doping controls. A few weeks later, the sanction was rescinded and she was able to participate in the World Championship in Budapest. She finished sixth, far from retaining the world title won a year earlier in Eugene, including a world record. At the end of the year, she won the Diamond League finals for the third consecutive season. In the first two stops of 2024, two setbacks: fifth in the debut in Xiamen, a false start and disqualification in Shanghai.

Last Saturday, in another turn devoid of predictability, the Nigerian sprinter backfired as a visitor that relocated her to the squad of favorites to be crowned Olympic champion, a condition she is not yet aware of. In the Jamaica Athletics Invitational 2024, she beat the current world champion, top candidate and local Danielle Williams, recording a time of 12.40 seconds, the best record of the year (“World Lead”).

The comeback after a costly start gave a more valuable connotation to the victory of the first Nigerian woman to break a world record, the 12.12 seconds still to her credit: she took the lead on the eighth hurdle and only in the final sprint did she consolidate the advantage of six hundredths over Williams and 14 over the North American Christina Clemens, who also ruled out the Doha stage in the Diamond League to race in a Jamaican match where, for example, Usain Bolt was two hundredths away from breaking his first world record, in 2008.

In addition to the one achieved by Amusan, other important triumphs were scored by Zharnel Hughes from Anguilla, owner of the 200 meters also with the best stopwatch of the season (19.96 seconds) and clearly surpassing world champions Fred Kerley (20.17 seconds) and Christian Coleman (20.46 seconds), and the Ivorian Marie-Josée Ta Lou-Smith, who took possession of the women’s 100 meters with the third most auspicious record of 2024 (10.96 seconds).

In the third stage of the Diamond League, the 100 meters hurdles were left to the Swiss Ditaji Kambundji, with a time in which she finished third at the Kingston National Stadium (12.52s). Reigning Olympic champion Jasmine Camacho-Quinn did not compete. In addition, four “World Leads” and two competition records broke into the Qatari capital.