USA's Masai Russell won a fierce battle for the 100m hurdles title at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on Saturday (10), dipping to victory in 12.33.
Getting gold by 0.01, it took a photo finish to decide the medallists, as Cyrena Samba-Mayela delighted the home crowd by securing silver for France in 12.34 and Puerto Rico's defending champion Jasmine Camacho-Quinn got bronze in 12.36.
In the deepest women’s 100m hurdles final in Olympic history, Nadine Visser and Grace Stark finished just three thousandths of a second apart as they both clocked 12.43 – Visser finishing a fraction ahead for fourth place.
Russell might only have won two finals in 2024, but she won the ones that mattered the most.
After an indoor season that included a fourth-place finish in the 60m hurdles at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow, the 24-year-old’s path to Paris included 100m hurdles victory at the US Olympic Team Trials in Eugene where she clocked a world-leading 12.25 to move to joint fourth on the world all-time list.
She then won her heat in Paris in 12.53 and finished second to Camacho-Quinn in her semifinal in 12.42.
In the final Russell lined up in lane five, next to her teammates Stark and Johnson. Russell knocked the second hurdle but didn’t seem to lose too much momentum, but Johnson hit the next barrier hard, ending her medal hopes.
As the rest of the field stormed away, Russell was alongside Stark and Camacho-Quinn, slightly behind Visser and Samba-Mayela, but she negotiated the final two barriers well and reached the finish line level with Samba-Mayela and Camacho-Quinn.
Samba-Mayela put her hands to her head and they all looked up at the results board, waiting for the positions to be confirmed. As Russell saw her name appear first, she jumped up and down and paced the track, while Samba-Mayela fell to the track in delight and was congratulated by Camacho-Quinn.
“I just took off running, because it's literally what I imagined,” said Russell. “I could barely sleep last night. I was tossing and turning because I kept dreaming about my name coming up No.1. When it actually came up, I was like: 'stop playing me, stop playing me'. Because so many people were saying so many crazy things about me, as they always do when you're not doing what they believe you're capable of.
“I just proceeded to shut out the noise, focused on what I could control. It was truly a dream come true.”
Samba-Mayela’s performance secured the first athletics medal of the Paris 2024 Games for the host nation.
“It's just a lot of amazing emotions and certainly a lot of pleasure,” said the 2022 world indoor 60m hurdles champion. “I thought that in this moment today I would just be stressed, but it wasn't the case. I was lifted by all these people and all the pleasure of sport.”
Such was the standard of the event in Paris, the final did not feature two-time world champion Danielle Williams or world record-holder Tobi Amusan, as their competition came to an end in the semifinals.
Credit: World Athletics