Olympic 100m silver medalist Sha’Carri Richardson (10.84) defeated the Olympic champion Julian Alfred (10.88) from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia at the Zurich, Switzerland Diamond League today (5th). Today’s race was the first time so many Olympic finalists were competing against one another since that wet Olympic final in Paris, when Alfred bolted from the blocks and held off the field to clock 10.72secs ahead of Richardson’s 10.87 and bronze medalist American Melisa Jefferson’s 10.92.
It was a rainy affair today again that saw Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith take the early lead and then overhauled by Alfred who relinquished that lead to Richardson.
A wet Zurich turned out bright for the Caribbean in other disciplines. In one of the fiercest ongoing rivalries, Jamaica’s Wayne Pinnock finally got the better of Olympic and World champion Miltiadis Tentoglou of Greece, who has held the world lead at 8.65 meters and a knack of snatching the win on his final jump.
On his second attempt, Pinnock registered 8.18 meters, a distance no one in the field surpassed. Tentoglou came closest when he leaped to 8.02 meters on his fifth jump.
The men’s 400m hurdles was another win for Jamaica with young rising challenger Roshawn Clarke defeated a decent field that included big guns Alison dos Santos of Brazil, Abderrahman Samba of Qatar, and CJ Allen of the USA. Clarke, a fourth-place 2023 World Championships finalist made up for his disappointing performance in Paris where he fell in the semi-final. This time, he ran a well-paced race for 47.49secs, his number two best time after his personal best 47.34.
More victory for Jamaica came in women’s 400m hurdles when, fifth-place Olympic finalist Shiann Salmon thwarted the efforts of Paris silver medalist Anna Cockrell (second 53.17) and Olympic finalist Shamier Little (third 54.07), both Americans. Salmon caught and left the field to post a personal best 52.97secs, her first time under 53secs.
Grenada was also in the spotlight; javelin thrower Anderson Peters, a two-time World Champion and 2024 Olympic bronze medalist who had the farthest personal best 93.07 meters and season best 90.61 among the field, hurled the javelin to 85.72 meters to defeat Julian Wenn of Germany (85.33) and Roderick Genki Dean of Japan (82.69).
But not only the English-speaking Caribbean enjoyed glory; Puerto Rico’s Olympic bronze medalist Jasmine Camacho-Quinn’s 12.36 got the better of her opponents in the women’s 100m hurdles, a strong field that almost looked like an Olympic final with Paris silver medalist Cyréna Samba-Mayela of France, Paris champion Masai Russell of the USA, fourth-place finalist Nadine Visser (Netherlands), fifth place Grace Stark (United States), former world record holder Kendra Harrison of the USA, and two-time World champion Danielle Williams Jamaica.