HELSINKI – The Bahamas’ Olympic champion Tonique Williams-Darling battled through torrential rain to win the world 400 metres title on Wednesday.<\/P><\/p>\n
Williams-Darling fought off a determined challenge from American Sanya Richards to take the gold medal in 49.55 seconds.<\/P><\/p>\n
Richards was second in 49.74 and 2003 world champion Ana Guevara of Mexico third in 49.81.<\/P><\/p>\n
Richards was level with Guevara at the first bend and had a slight lead coming off the final turn but Williams-Darling maintained her form and powered through to the finish.<\/P><\/p>\n
The 29-year-old, who won a share of the Golden League jackpot in 2004, knelt down on the track and mouthed the words “thank you” before wrapping a Bahamian flag around herself.<\/P><\/p>\n
Richards’s silver was her first individual medal at a major championships. She won gold in the 4×400 relay at the 2003 world championships and last year’s Olympics.<\/P><\/p>\n
By Alison Wildey
\ntoday.reuters.co.uk<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Williams-Darling powers to 400 metres world title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}