Move over, Usain Bolt. Here comes Dafne Schippers. Because anyone who thought things might slow down a little inside the Bird’s Nest in the absence of Bolt instead witnessed Schippers run the third fastest women’s 200 metres in history – possibly even the fastest ever.
She’s definitely the first Dutch sprinter to win a World or Olympic title since Fanny Blankers-Koen – the legendary “Flying Housewife” – claimed both sprints at the 1948 London Olympics. Although it was Schippers’s time of 21.63 seconds that drew the sort of audible gasps more associated with an athlete like Bolt.
It was just marginally enough to win Schippers the gold medal, ahead of Elaine Thompson from Jamaica, who ran 21.66. Yet not even Schippers, the former heptathlon specialist who finished second in the 100m last Monday, could have expected the clock to stop at 21.63.
Not only was it a personal best and World Championship record, it also broke the European record of 21.71 set by Marita Koch in 1979 and equalled by Heike Drechsler in 1986 – both those athletes being the product of the notorious East German doping regime (indeed Drechsler later admitted to unknowingly taking drugs).
It also moved Schippers into third on the all-time women's list behind Florence Griffith-Joyner and Marion Jones, who should need no introduction. Griffith-Joyner's world record of 21.34 stands since 1988, although she died 10 years later, age 38, after a career dogged by allegations of doping, while Jones, who ran 21.62 at altitude in 1998, was later disgraced and stripped of her Olympic medals after eventually admitting to steroid use.
Schippers was inevitably compared with both these athletes and their times, realising where the questions were going: “I know I am clean, and I know I work very hard for it,” she said, “I’m a very happy with my time, and I can’t believe, it at this moment.”
The 23-year-old certainly has the pedigree, actually winning the bronze medal in the heptathlon in Moscow two years ago, and there's lots of YouTube footage demonstrating her exceptional talent as a teenager. Still, her coach, Bart Bennema, also found himself having to defend this considerable, partly because of the slight acne on Schippers's face, a side-effect associated with doping.
“If you walk down the street in Holland, I can point out 10 girls her age with that skin,” said Bennema. “Sometimes you have bad skin. I understand that it’s one of the things you have when you use something like doping but sometimes you just have bad skin. It’s unfair. It’s in her family. I cannot help it.
“I understand the question because she’s white but it’s not a factor for me. She just has the right genes. It’s the way it is. When they line up it’s just eight women that want to run fast, that’s it. It doesn’t matter.”
The other Jamaican, Veronica Campbell-Brown, two-time Olympic champion at 200m, also ran sub-22 seconds with 21.97 in third. It was only the second time in history that three women have run under 22 seconds in the same race (the other one being that 1988 Olympic final).
There was a similar groundbreaking run from Sergey Shubenkov from Russia, who claimed their first gold medal in Beijing by winning the 110m hurdles in a new national record of 12.98 seconds – his first ever sub-13 clocking. Again, Shubenkov is no stranger to the scene, the man from Siberia winning bronze two years ago in Moscow, and clearly at his sharpest here.
He needed to be, throwing himself across the finish line ahead of Hansle Parchment of Jamaica, who clocked 13.03 to match the silver medal he also won at the London Olympics. Also looking perfectly delighted with his bronze medal was the American Aries Merritt, who ran 13.04.
That's because Merritt, the world record holder, hasn't been at his best in Beijing, for now obvious reasons: last week he revealed he's been suffering from a rare kidney disorder that will require immediate replacement, his sister coming forward to make the necessary donation. Merritt will now immediately return to the US, his operation set for next Monday. Fellow American and defending champion David Oliver finished seventh in 13.33.
There was an even bigger upset in the women's 100m hurdles when Jamaica's Danielle Williams won gold in 12.57 seconds, with defending champion Brianna Rollins from the USA ended up in fourth, while in the women's long jump, national records from Britain's Shara Proctor (7.07m) and Serbia's Ivana Spanovic (7.01m) weren't enough to win gold, as America's Tianna Bartoletta snatched the title with her last leap of 7.14m, 10 years after winning gold in Helsinki in 2005.
