IAAF World Athletics Championships - Sicobo fails to go past preliminaries |07 August 2017

Dylan Sicobo failed to make it out of the preliminary round of the 100m on Friday thereby falling short of his expectation.

After pulverising his own 100m Seychelles record with a time of 10.33 seconds during the semifinals of the Jeux de la Francophonie late last month in Côte d’Ivoire and matching the time in the final to win the gold medal, Sicobo was expected to put in another stellar performance during the ongoing IAAF World Athletics Championships in London.

Running in heat number two on Friday, Sicobo could only stop the clock at 11.01 seconds to take fourth position and miss out on the semifinals. Only the first three in each heat qualified for the semifinals along with the two fastest.

Although, his fans would have been expecting a better performance from the man who beat the Seychelles 100m record three times this year after Cyril Brioche’s old best of 10.51 seconds had stood for 29 years, Sicobo probably was feeling tired.

He only returned to Seychelles from Côte d’Ivoire via Ethiopia on Tuesday August 1 and the following night (Wednesday) left for London via Dubai. The 20-year-old, who picked up a hamstring injury at the Jeux de la Francophonie when running the 4x100m relay and finishing third for the bronze medal, arrived in London last Thursday and was in the starting blocks the following day (Friday).

Still young, it appears that Sicobo who trains in Mauritius, still has a lot left in the tank.

Meanwhile, in Saturday’s men’s 100m final, 35-year-old American Justin Gatlin spoiled Jamaican Usain Bolt's final individual 100m race by beating him to take the gold medal in a season’s best 9.92 seconds.

Fellow American Christian Coleman took the silver medal (9.94 seconds) and Bolt had to settle for the bronze (9.95 seconds).

Bolt, 30, had not lost a 100m heat since 2013, until Coleman beat him in the semifinals. In 2015, he made history by becoming the first man to win three straight gold medals in the event at the Olympics, but he decided to return for one more major tournament rather than retire then.

G. G.