From the UK Guardian -- Allyson Felix's first reaction was not joy, but relief. After winning silver medals in the 200m at successive Olympic Games, each time behind her great rival from Jamaica, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Felix had finally got the gold. Felix, who says that she has been plagued by thoughts of her defeat in 2008 every night for the past four years, beat one of the greatest fields ever assembled in the history of women's sprinting. And she did it with ease. Her winning time was 21.88sec, which was some way off her best, but good enough on the night.
Campbell-Brown was trying to become the first woman in history to win sprint titles at three successive Games. She did not do it, but finished fourth. Ahead of her were the USA's Carmelita Jeter, the world 100m champion, and her Jamaican team-mate Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, who was trying to become the first woman to win the sprint double at the Olympic Games since Florence Griffith Joyner did it in Seoul in 1988. In fifth was Sanya Richards-Ross, who would have been the first woman to do the Olympic 200m and 400m double since Marie-Jo Pérec in 1996. So Felix beat two current world champions, and two current Olympic champions.
The medals for Jeter and Felix tipped the ongoing sprint rivalry between Jamaica and the USA back the other way, and bumped the Americans up the athletics medal table after a disappointing few days. Surprisingly, this was the USA's first female sprint gold since Gail Devers won the 100m in 1996.
Felix did it in style, taking a narrow lead around the bend and holding on to it as the two Jamaican champions inside her came up to join her with 100m to go. Campbell-Brown began to go backwards, as Felix found another turn of speed and pushed on for the line. Jeter, in lane nine, barnstormed the finish to beat Campbell-Brown to bronze. She finished in 22.14sec, five hundredths behind Fraser-Pryce, who set a new personal best of 22.09.
Campbell-Brown and Felix are two of the great sprinters of their time. They have fought a series of duels running right back to 2004, sharing every major medal between them, and with one or the other topping the world rankings every year between then and 2011. Campbell-Brown won two Olympic golds in that time, Felix three at world championships. But there was no disguising who was the happier of the two. Felix has said she would give all three of her golds to get her hands on just one of Campbell-Brown's.
In 2004 there had been just 0.13 between them in the final, and in 2008 it was 0.17. "That 2008 final, every day since then I am always thinking about it," Felix has said. "I don't want to get that thought out of my head. It is my motivation. I've got to win, this is the one missing thing and it is the one that I want."
In 2011 Felix got so desperate for an Olympic medal that she decided to step up to the 400m too, attempting to do the double at the world championships in Daegu. She reckoned she stood a better chance of winning that elusive Olympic gold at the longer distance. In the end though, the endurance work robbed her of her sprinting speed. Caught between the two events, she won neither. Campbell-Brown won gold that time, but she wasn't the only one who took advantage. Richards-Ross and Fraser-Pryce, both sensing an opportunity, both decided to target the 200m too. Neither had ever won a medal at a major championships at that distance. All of a sudden, the 200m had turned into one of the hottest events at the Games, the field stacked with champions of one sort or another. In the space of three weeks in June and July, both Fraser-Pryce, Richards-Ross and Jeter set new personal bests, and there were only two-hundredths of a second between them.
Unhappy with the silver and bronze she won at the 2011 world championships, Felix told her coach Bob Kersee, who coached his wife Jackie Joyner-Kersee to two Olympic gold medals in the heptathlon, that she wanted to switch back to speed work and try for the 100m/200m double instead. She finished fifth behind Fraser-Pryce in the 100m final last Saturday, but in a new personal best time of 10.89. Following on from the 21.69 she ran in the 200m at the US trials, which was the fourth-quickest time in history, there was a sense that she had sheer speed in her slender legs that was going to be too much for her rivals.
Felix, the son of a church minister, reads to herself from Philippians before every race. Her favourite passage reads "If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labour for me." Never more so than on Wednesday night. (source: UK Guardian)
