Four gold medals were awarded at the World Athletics championships in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Thursday.
American hurdler Allen Johnson captured his third world title in the men's 110 meter hurdles.
Allen Johnson had been plagued by injuries the past two years, and was left off the medals stand at last year's Olympics in Sydney. However, Johnson sped down the track at Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium Thursday night and won the 110 meter hurdles in 13.04 seconds.
The former Olympic gold medallist told VOA Sports that winning his third world title was very special. "I had a lot of success early in 1995, 1996 and 1997," Johnson said. "And I was on a roll, and then it seemed like everything kind of fell apart after that. And I just put it back together again, and I was able to come out on top this time; and it made me feel really good."
Olympic champion Anier Garcia of Cuba won the silver, and Dudley Dorival of Haiti won the bronze.
Australian Dmitriy Markov won the men's pole vault by clearing 6.05 meters. Markov said afterward that he had no idea that he could clear that height at this meet. "I just came in wanting to make good jumps," Markov said. "I did not care about how high and what kind of result. And I made the jumps and its result was coming."
Israel's Aleksandr Averbukh won the silver medal by clearing 5.85 meters. American Nick Hysong, the Olympic Champion from Sydney, won the bronze medal. He said he was not surprised with the result. "I did not quite think that there would be that many people still jumping when the bar was at 5.85. But the heights were pretty much where I thought they would be, as far as for places," Hysong said.
Olimpiada Ivanova of Russia won the women's 20 kilometer walk. The silver went to Valentina Tsybulkaya of Belarus. Elisabetta Perrone of Italy won the bronze.
Olympic champion Kostadinos Kederis of Greece won the men's 200 meters title. Christopher Williams of Jamaica won the silver, and Shawn Crawford of the United States, and Kim Collins of Saint Kitts-Nevis shared the bronze medal.
Six gold medals are on the line Friday: the women's triple jump, the men's 400 meter hurdles, the women's 200 meters and the men's 5,000 meters, as well as two wheelchair events the men's 1,500 meters and the women's 800 meters.