Athletics: Faumuina still focused after failure

Beatrice Faumuina walked away bemused, deflated but determined to show her true form in coming weeks after her world championship discus flop in Paris yesterday.

The 1997 world champion struggled for answers after an effort she likened to a golfer's air shot - a best throw of 56.86m to finish last of the 13 finalists.

It was almost 12m short of her personal best, and well adrift of Belarussian Irina Yatchenko's winning effort of 67.32m.

At 37, Yatchenko became the world's oldest track and field world champion.

Faumuina never found her timing at a seething Stade de France after taking a satisfying 63m effort to be the third-best qualifier on Sunday.

"Even though you've done it a thousand times, you can be off just one millisecond and it can change so many things," Faumuina, 28, said.

"Like a golf shot, you can completely miss it.

"I can't explain it at the moment. I know what happened, I just didn't use my legs, I tried and tried again and just got stuck.

"The disappointing thing for me is that leading into this competition, everything was going so well."

The crowd of around 100,000 yesterday was at fever pitch with the men's 100m final the highlight event, but Faumuina refused to use that as an excuse.

"The stadium was absolutely electric, it was just crazy.

"There's no way you can walk into that stadium and not feel enthusiastic or pumped about competing."

Faumuina insisted she would not be downcast and after supporting her team-mates in coming days, she would be back into training.

A thrower's meet in Germany in just under a fortnight then the world series final in Monaco on September 13-14, gives Faumuina a chance to make amends against all her rivals from yesterday.

"I'm not the kind of person to just sit here and dwell on it. I've got to move on from here.

"If I look at my whole career I've had ups and downs, it's never been smooth. "It's a disappointing result but I'll move on."

The other New Zealander in action yesterday, 1500m runner Adrian Blincoe, failed to advance past the semifinals.

Blincoe finished ninth in his semifinal in 3m 41.53s, considerably better than the 3m 47.26s he ran to win his heat last weekend.

Craig Barrett in the 50km walk and shot putter Valerie Adams are in action today.

* Kim Collins won the world 100m title for the tiny nation of St Kitts and Nevis as American sprinters finished out of the medals for the first time since 1995.

Another Caribbean athlete, Darrel Brown, of Trinidad and Tobago, was second and Briton Darren Campbell third.

"I am thinking about a shop in St Kitts and Nevis and people there must be buying beer now," 27-year-old Collins said.

"It's rather small on the map, but it's rather bigger now."

Collins clocked 10.07s while Brown and Campbell were both timed at 10.08s.

Briton Dwain Chambers, the European champion, also clocked 10.08s, but was given fourth place.

The first six athletes were all within six-hundredths of a second of each other.

Defending champion Maurice Greene, aiming for an unprecedented fourth world title, was eliminated in the semifinals.

The American, 29, made a flying start but slowed noticeably to finish eighth after injuring his left thigh.

World recordholder Tim Montgomery, who appeared to have regained form in the opening heats, could finish only fifth in the final, with United States champion Bernard Williams sixth.

Collins' winning time was equal to the slowest in any men's 100m final in the 20-year history of the world championships.

Nine-time Olympic champion Carl Lewis also clocked 10.07s when winning the first of his three world gold medals in Helsinki in 1983.



* An injured Jonathan Edwards, of Britain, withdrew from the men's triple jump final after just two jumps, but with no regrets.

Edwards, 37, the Olympic gold medallist and world recordholder, said before the championships that he would retire after the final.

The event was won by Sweden's Christian Olsson, who had a best of 17.72m.

- AGENCIES