Brown gets 100m mark ratified

MONTE CARLO: Trinidad and Tobago sprinter  Darrel Brown had his junior 100-metre world record ratified yesterday by the International Association of Athletics Federations. Brown clocked 10.01 seconds at the World Championships in Paris on August 23, beating the previous junior mark of 10.06 set by Britain’s Dwain Chambers in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1997. The 19-year-old Brown had a fantastic 2003 season, when he finished second in the men’s 100m final at the IAAF World Senior Track and Field Championships in Paris, France with a 10.07 clocking, 0.01 seconds behind St Kitts and Nevis’ Kim Collins. The Auburn University, USA student is also the 2002 World Junior 100m champ and is currently under a lucrative contract with the firm Nike. But he was recently embroiled in controversy when a newspaper report in Trinidad labelled him as a drug cheat, a claim stringently denied by his manager and father Winston Brown.

The IAAF yesterday also ratified the junior record of 19-year-old discus thrower Omar Ahmed El-Ghazaly, who became the first Egyptian to establish an athletics world record when he threw 65.88 metres on November 7. El-Ghazaly beat the 64.51-metre record of China’s Wu Tao, set in July 2002 in Kingston, Jamaica. In other men’s world junior records, Kenya’s Alex Kipchirchir set a new mile mark of three minutes 50.25 seconds in Rieti, Italy on July 20, 2003. He beat the time of 3:50.39 set by countryman James Kwalia on June 1 last year. Jamaica’s Usain Bolt equalled the 200-metre junior record of American Roy Martin on July 20, 2003 in Bridgetown, Barbados. Martin ran 20.13 seconds in Indianapolis in June 1985. In junior women’s records, China’s Huina Xing ran 30 minutes, 31.55 seconds to beat the 10,000-metre record set by compatriot Lan Lixin in October 1997. Huina’s August 23, 2003  record was eight seconds faster than Lan’s.  China’s Xue Juan set a new junior javelin record of 62.93 metres in Changsha, China, on October 27. The previous mark was 61.99 metres by China’s Wang Yaning in October 1999.