EUGENE, Oregon, CMC – Olympic champion Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas crushed her opposition to convincingly win the 400 metres at the Prefontaine Classic here yesterday.
In the third meeting of the IAAF Diamond League at Hayward Field, the 24-year-old cruised to a time of 49.52 seconds after dominating the last 200 metres of the event.
Running out of lane four, Miller-Uibo made progress down the backstretch as American Phyllis Francis and Shakima Wimbley showed early.
Miller-Uibo came off the turn level with Francis (50.81) but pulled away to leave the field in her wake and cross the line without a challenger.
“I feel like I’ve gotten really strong this year and the race just felt really great,” said Miller-Uibo, who won the 200 metres in Shanghai two weeks ago.
“There are some things to work on going forward but for this early in the season I will take that.”
There was also a second win for Jamaican Omar McLeod who took the 110 metres hurdles in a time of 13.01 seconds.
The Olympic champion was pushed all the way to the line by second placed Sergey Shubenkov (13.08), American Devon Allen who was second in 13.13 and Spain’s Orlando Ortega who was fourth.
Another Jamaican, Janieve Russell, produced a late burst to snatch the women’s 400m hurdles in a time of 54.06 seconds.
Olympic champion Dalilah Muhammmad (54.09) appeared set for the win coming off the last hurdle with Russell in third before the latter surged to the line first.
American Georganne Moline finished third in 54.33. Once again, however, double Olympic sprint champion Elaine Thompson failed to shine, trailing home third in the women’s 100m in 10.98 as Ivorian Marie-Josée Ta Lou won in 10.88.
Commonwealth champion Jereem Richards finished a distant second in the men’s 200m event in 20.05 after American Noah Lyles clocked a joint world-leading 19.7 to take the win.
