ITALY’S Lamont Marcell Jacobs claimed a shock gold in the Olympic 100m final, after Great Britain’s Zharnel Hughes was disqualified for a false start.
Jacobs, who only switched away from long jump in 2018, streaked clear to win in 9.80 seconds, 0.04 clear of American Fred Kerley.
Canada’s Andre de Grasse won a second successive Olympic bronze in third.
World champion Christian Coleman and Trayvon Bromell, the world’s fastest in 2021, were both absent from the final.
Coleman, banned for whereabouts failures after missing three drugs tests, and Bromell, eliminated in the semi-finals, were joined on the sidelines by the long-retired defending champion Usain Bolt.
Few would have picked Jacobs, who was born in Texas to an American father but moved to his mother’s Italian homeland before his first birthday, as the Jamaican great’s successor.
But the European indoor 60m champion carried the momentum from his fast start all the way to the line to register a time faster than Bolt’s winning mark in Rio.
He was greeted by compatriot Gianmarco Tamberi, who had won a joint high-jump gold just minutes before and wrapped him in the Italian flag and an embrace.
Meanwhile, Great Britain won a record eighth swimming medal at Tokyo 2020 as Duncan Scott’s silver in the men’s 4x100m medley relay set a new landmark for medals won by a Briton at a single Games.
The quartet of Scott, Adam Peaty, Luke Greenbank and James Guy finished 0.73 seconds behind gold-medal winners USA.
Italy finished third to take bronze.
The silver was Scott’s fourth medal in Tokyo as Britain signed off their most successful Olympics in the pool.
The USA needed a world record time of three minutes 26.78 seconds to beat Great Britain to gold in the final event of the swimming.
The win also meant a fifth gold medal in Tokyo for American superstar Caeleb Dressel. He joins compatriots Michael Phelps, Mark Spitz and Matt Biondi, as well as East Germany’s Kristin Otto, as the only swimmers to win as many as five golds at a single Olympics.
And Venezuela’s Yulimar Rojas added Olympic gold to her world triple-jump titles, finally claiming the world record she has threatened all season.
The 25-year-old already had victory wrapped up when she approached her final attempt, with no-one able to get close to her opening-round leap of 15.41m. – BBC.
