Kerron Clement wins his 1st Olympic gold in 400-meter hurdles

Rio de Janeiro, Aug 18 (EFE). —  U.S. hurdler Kerron Clement, the world champion in the 400meter in 2007 and 2009, on Thursday garnered his first Olympic gold medal by winning the event final at the Rio de Janeiro Games with a time of 47.73 seconds, 0.05 seconds ahead of Kenya’s Boniface Tumuti.

Yasmani Copello, running for Turkey but of Cuban origin and current European champion, won the bronze with a time of 47.92, a national record, while Puerto Rico’s Javier Culson, 32, a bronze medalist at the 2012 London Games, was disqualified for a false start.

The Trinidadianborn Clement, 30, had not won a gold medal in the past seven years, but this season he had returned to his earlier form with a time of 48.26 in the Olympic semifinals.

Given that the fastest hurdler of the year in the 400meter hurdles, compatriot Johnny Dutch (48.10), was unable to secure a place on the U.S. Olympic track team, and the three medalists at the 2015 Beijing World Championships were absent or far off their earlier times, Clement stood a good chance of making it to the pinnacle of the podium.

Specifically, Kenya’s Nicholas Bett, the surprise world champion in Beijing, had stumbled in the series and remained out of the final, world No. 2 Dennis Kudryavtsev had been banned due to the Russian doping scandal and bronze medalist Jeffrey Gibson of The Bahamas was in 18th place in the world rankings.

Clement’s greatest threat came from the Hispanic world from Culson who won the bronze in London in 2012, is a twotime world champion and was No. 4 in the rankings with 48.63 and Yasmani Copello, the recent European champ with a time of 48.42.

However, Culson’s disqualification laid to rest even more doubts and Clement was the undisputed favorite to win the 400meter gold. After the starting gun, he was clearly pushing hard for the entire race, although down the stretch Tumuti, who last year was 5th in the world, moved up from the middle of the field, passing everyone except Clement for a welldeserved silver.

The result was that Clement, who had burst onto the scene as the U.S. champion at age 20 and at the 2008 Beijing Games won the silver medal, this time was easily able to grab the gold.