Athletics: Dive gives American win over Pistorious

Oscar Pistorius. Photo / John McCombe

A lunging dive at the line was enough to give American Jerome Singleton the narrowest of victories over South African rival Oscar Pistorious in the T44 100m final at the IPC athletics world championships in Christchurch yesterday.

Both recorded the relatively slow time of 11.34 seconds, but after a long deliberation, the nod went to Singleton.

"There's a lot of me that won't be leaving New Zealand," Singleton said in reference to the amount of skin he lost in diving for the line.

"But it was all worth it."

Pistorious was gracious in defeat.

"He [Singleton] was the better man on the day. He has been improving all the time and he is a champion in the making," he said.

Six world records were set yesterday to lift the meet haul to 35 after five days of competition.

Great Britain's Daniel Greaves, Michael McKillop, of Ireland, Algeria's Sofiance Hamdi, Yohansson Nascimento, of Brazil, Russian Alexey Ashapatov and Cuban Omara Durand all set new world records.

Greaves bettered his own world record by more than 3m with a throw of 58.98m in the F44 discus.

Nascimento ran 11.01sec to win the 100m T46 while McKillop, with only two in the 1500m T35 field, led from the gun and easily beat runner-up Khaled Hannani, of Algeria.

Durand set a time of 24.24sec in winning the women's 200m T13 event, winning by over a second in 24.24secs.

South African Fanie Van Der Merwe had the mortification of not only getting nosed out of the gold medal but also having his world record taken away by Hamdi in the men's 200m T37 final. Both went under the old time with the Algerian winning by 0.03sec in 23.64sec.

Ashapatov was leading going into the last round of the men's F57/58 discus, but put it beyond doubt with a world record 57.64m, 0.03m better than the previous mark.

A recurring calf muscle injury has forced Wellington's Tim Prendergast out of today's heats of the 800m.

Prendergast struggled to complete the 1500m on Sunday when his leg muscle tightened and he has been unable to recover in time.

New Zealand has only two athletes competing today, with Opotiki's Matthew Lack in the heats of the 400m and Sunil Fernandez-Ritchie in the 1500m heats.

- NZPA