Usain Bolt’s third Moscow medal heads up 84/1 last day acca
Published:Usain Bolt has – once again – been the star of the World Athletics Championships – and another medal for him is one of the headline acts in our 84/1 accumulator for the final day of the meeting.
Usain Bolt will add the stardust to this team once the best of the rest have done their job in the semi-finals.
Warren Weir, Oshane Bailey, 100m bronze medallist Nesta Carter and Kemar Bailey-Cole should prove too strong in the heats, with Bolt added for the final to lead Jamaica to glory.
A success would ensure a third Moscow gold medal for the most famous athlete in the world, who on Saturday became the first man to ever win three successive 200m gold medals.
The absence of Alyson Felix following her hamstring tear in the 200m final on Friday is a huge blow for the American team, who nonetheless retain odd-on favouritism at 4/7.
But instead of the US, it could be the 6/4 Jamaicans who come to the fore and secure a third gold medal for sprint queen Shelley-Ann Fraser-Pryce, who can add to her 100m and 200m successes in Moscow once she joins the team for the final.
Kenyan Asbel Kiprop is the reigning champion in this event having won in Daegu two years ago, and he is again seen as the man to beat over the metric mile.
Kiprop was awarded the gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics following Rashid Razi’s positive doping test, and here he’ll be backed to spearhead a Kenyan assault on the title ahead of teammate Silas Kiplagat, the reigning Commonwealth Games champion.
Onlookers can’t fail to have been impressed with the performance of American Alysia Johnson Montano in her semi-final, when she clocked a terrific time of 1:58.92.
A 26.85 second first 200m set up that time, and she can go well again in a semi-final in which her competition is likely to come from home favourite Mariya Savinova, who clocked a time almost two seconds back from Johnson Montano in her semi.
Frenchman Teddy Tamgho only needed one legal jump to make it into this final, with his effort of 17.41m proving enough to qualify in first place.
Three years on from recording the third-best triple jump of all time at 17.98 metres, Tamgho qualified 2cm ahead of compatriot Yoann Rapnier and will be confident of seeing off the American pair of Christian Taylor and William Claye here.
Home favourite Mariya Abakumova is expected to do the business here, and it is tough to see past her.
From the moment she won World Championship gold in Daegu last year she’d have been aiming for this title, and she should oblige for the Moscow fans.
