James Nolan is through to the semi-finals of the World Indoor Athletics Championships in Maebashi, Japan this morning, after surviving uneasily in yesterday's preliminaries.
Nolan finished third behind the holder, Wilson Kipketer, and Burundi's Artheman Hatungimana in a time of one minute 48.46 seconds and afterwards admitted that he had run a bad tactical race.
"I got myself involved in some bad positions and wasted a lot of energy unnecessarily," he said. "Hopefully, however, I can now learn from those mistakes."
With just two to qualify from six starters Nolan faces an even bigger test in the semi-finals in which he is drawn against two likely medallists, Norbarto Tellez of Cuba and the Italian Andrea Longo. David Matthews's attempt to join Nolan in the semi-finals, ended in disappointment when he could finish only fourth in the heat won by Longo in one minute 49.29 seconds. The Irishman was timed at I:49.84. There was no luck either for Peter Coghlan who in spite of running close to his personal best time still had to settle for fourth place in his heat of the 60 metres hurdles championship. The title was later won by Colin Jackson who held on in a thrilling finish against the American Reggie Torian. Jackson was quickly away (his reaction time of 0.111 seconds being as close to the limit as possible), but was closely pressed by Torian drawn in the next lane.
After referring to the photo-finish, the judges gave the race to Jackson in a championship record 7.38 seconds.
