Daily Nation reports:The ease with which Asbel Kiprop loped through the field on the final lap of the men’s 1500m semi-final on Tuesday underlined his talent and tactical thinking.
Kiprop, the Olympic silver medallist, is looking a good bet for a world title on Wednesday night at the 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics.
Though Peter Rono and Noah Ngeny have won Olympic 1500m titles in the last two decades, they can hardly be said to have dominated the event like Kip Keino did back in the sixties, when the Kenyans first shocked the athletics world. But Kiprop has the capacity to become the ruling figure in the event for a while.
The final could conceivably devolve into a Kenyan v American struggle, with the dash of brio being that defending champion Bernard Lagat, once the former is now the latter. But though Lopez Lomong and Lagat qualified easily in heat one, it was Leonel Manzano who looked the best of the US trio. Deresse Mekonnen did not feature as prominently as his season’s showing suggested, and the best of the three Moroccans in the final, Amine Lalou may be the man to surprise them all.
In the other classic middle distance on Wednesday night, who could have imagined 12 months after their cavalcade to gold and silver in the Olympic 800 metres that Pamela Jelimo and Janeth Jepkosgei would struggle to make the world final? In fact, Jelimo didn’t, stopping halfway round the second lap of her semi.
Defending champion Jepkosgei’s story is a little more complicated. Given a pass to the semis, after she fell in the first round, she was chasing home by the 18-year-old Caster Semenya of South Africa in her semi, when she stopped too abruptly on the line, and let Britain’s Jenny Meadows snatch the automatic second qualifying place. Only the slowest last heat gave Jepkosgei another pass to the final as the fastest loser. Wednesday’s final against an impressive Semenya is another potential cliffhanger.
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