Nyairera faces Semenya

Olympic 800m bronze medallist Margaret Nyairera will renew her rivalry with Olympic champion Caster Semenya at the Carrara Stadium today.

Nyairera will team up with Emily Cherotich and Eglay Nalianya to try to bring down the powerful South African who has already won a Commonwealth Games gold after victory in 1,500m.

In the first round yesterday, four runners registered season best times, with two of them boasting times quicker than 1:59. Throw in the fact that championship racing is often tactical, predicting the first two automatic qualifiers was not an easy task.

Semenya, Nalianya who ran a personal best (PB) time of 2:00.28, and Alexandra Bell of England progressed in serene fashion in heat one, although it does not take a mathematician to know that beating Semenya for gold today will not be easy.

Semenya won the heat in 1:59.26 ahead of Bell (2:00.11), with Nalianya third. Uganda’s Dorcus Ajok (2:00.53) and New Zealand’s Angela Petty (2:00.62) followed in that order.

The second heat featured Nyairera, who waited until the final 70m before surging through to win. She reacted to the gun like a sprinter to victory in 2:00.60.

Jamaica’s Natoya Goule was second in 2:00.74 to book a slot in the final while England’s Shelayna Oskan (2:00.81) missed out.

The final race featured Emily Cherotich and Uganda’s Winnie Nanyondo, the Commonwealth Games bronze medallist in Glasgow, who has consistently run fast times in recent seasons.

Cherotich won in 2:00.58 ahead of Nanyondo (2:00.69).

Commonwealth Games javelin defending champion Julius Yego has a second chance to redeem his career after a dismal show at the IAAF World Athletics Championships in London, England, last year.

The alumnus of Kapsabet Boys High School carried his 92.72m mark, which he set at the 2015 Beijing worlds, to the rich field in London.

His poor showing in London dampened the spirits of Kenyan field event fans, who believed Yego had inspired budding javelin talent.

Yego, who has a personal best throw of 92.72m, will take on Ben Langton Burnell (82.44) of New Zealand, India’s Vipin Kashana (80.04m), and homeboy Hamish Peacock, who won bronze in Glasgow.

Yego threw 83.87m to strike gold in Glasgow while Kershon Walcott of Trinidad and Tobago settled for silver (82.67m) as Peacock (81.75m) bagged bronze.

Yego went down in history as the first Kenyan to win a gold medal in a field event at the Commonwealth Games with the win in Glasgow.

John Mayaka set the ball rolling for Kenya when he won a bronze medal in javelin at the Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1974.