De Grasse edges Coleman to win 200 metres in Ostrava

PRAGUE: Canada’s Andre De Grasse beat Christian Coleman of the United States to win the 200 metres at the Golden Spike meet in Ostrava on Thursday in 19.91 seconds.

Coleman, the fastest man at 100 metres this year, clocked 19.97sec on a rainy evening in the eastern Czech steel hub. Both men recorded their best times of the season.

De Grasse, who won a silver and two bronzes at the 2016 Olympics, took the win only an hour after finishing second on the 100 in 10.05 seconds, trailing winner Mike Rodgers of the USA by a hundredth of a second.

Before the rain started, two-time world high jump champion Mariya Lasitskene of Russia cleared 2.06 metres to equal her personal best. The 2015 and 2017 world champion matched her season’s best in the high jump by clearing 2.06 metres, three centimetres shy of Bulgarian jumper Stefka Kostadinova’s 32-year-old world record of 2.09m.

Cuba’s Juan Miguel Echevarria took the men’s long jump honours for 8.32m. Shaunae Miller-Uibo of the Bahamas, the reigning Olympic champion in the 400m, set an IAAF official all-time best in the rarely-run 300m, clocking 34.41sec, although controversial East German athlete Marita Koch is credited with covering the distance faster at the start of a 400m in 1985.