Triumph and tragedy at Goodwill

NEW YORK, July 22: On a night when Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene proved they are the world's fastest runners, a scared 17-year-old C...

NEW YORK, July 22: On a night when Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene proved they are the world’s fastest runners, a scared 17-year-old Chinese gymnast lay in a hospital bed fearing she might never walk again.

The greatest triumphs and most frightful tragedy of the Goodwill Games happened here yesterday barely 1,000 metres apart.

Greene won the 100 metres while Johnson took the 400m at Mitchel Field Track while China’s Sang Lan suffered a severe spinal cord injury after landing on her head after a

warm-up vault at the adjacent Nassau Coliseum.

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“She is paralysed and cannot move her legs,” Goodwill Games chief medical officer, Brock Schnebel said. “She cannot feel from her chest down.”

China’s national vaulting champion, seeking gold in the apparatus final, was carried off the mat on a stretcher and taken to Nassau County Medical Centre, where Schnebel examined x-rays and cat-scans.

Sang performed a forward flip over the vault, soared out of control and fell hard, jamming her chin forward onto herchest and suffering a fractured-dislocation of the sixth and seventh cervical vertebrae.

On the track, world 100m champion Greene won in 9.96 seconds, World 200 champion Ato Boldon of Trinidad was second in 10.00s.

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Canada’s Donovan Bailey, who set a world record of 9.84s at Atlanta Olympics but has not run well this season, had a poor start and slowed before the finish line to place seventh in 10.30.

Taunts between rivals continued after Bailey’s bail-out, with Boldon saying, “If the car runs out of gas, you put it in neutral” and Greene adding, “I don’t know what’s going through his mind. I can’t worry about him. I have people out there who are not walking to the line.”

World and Olympic champion Johnson pulled away to win the 400m in 43.76s, the fastest time in world this year and one, he said, shows he is ready to put nagging left leg injuries behind him.

Two-time Olympic heptathlon champion, Jackie Joyner-Kersee stood second after the first day of her last heptathlon. She will retire onSaturday after a long jump competition at a Grand Prik Meet near her hometown.

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Joyner-Kersee won the shot put at 15.59m. But was fifth in the 200m in 24.47s to stand at 3,833 points through four of the seven events, 34 behind American Dedee Nathan and two ahead of Lithuania’s Remigija Nazaroviene.Bobby Kersee, her husband and coach, said his wife should win even though she has not competed in a heptathlon since the 1996 Olympics.

The end might also be near for 34-year-old world pole-vault champion Sergei Bubka, who failed at an opening height of 5.70m. The Ukranian has set 35 world marks but no-heighted for the second time in three meets.