Williams makes it a double for US

Dinesh Weerawansa reporting from Finland

HELSINKI, Tuesday - Athens Olympics silver medallist Lauryn Williams paired off with team mate Justin Gatlin to give the USA a golden double as the fastest man and woman at the 10th IAAF World Championships here last night.

Less than 24 hours after Gatlin's triumph in the men's 100m final, his team mate Williams gave the Americans yet another gold medal in women's short sprint final at the Olympic Stadium here last night.

There was drizzle exactly five minutes before women's 100m final when the elite woman sprinters were taking off their warm kits.

But it was all cleared when Williams clocked a wind-assisted 10.93 seconds to narrowly edge out Jamaican Olympic bronze medallist Veronica Campbell (10.95) and the French hot favourite Christine Arron to (10.98) emerge as the fastest woman at the Helsinki World championships in the Finnish capital. Arron was probably the emotional favourite for the women's sprint crown, but after dominating the early rounds, the demons got to her start again, which was easily the worst of the line-up. She did well to win bronze, but was not close enough to challenge Williams.

After her runner-up finish Oslo's Bislett Games at the TDK Golden League meeting less than two weeks ago, Wlliams spoke frankly about her post-Olympic campaign. "It was not as great as I thought it would be," she said. At the time, she notched just one win in eight races. After her 10.93 win at Helsinki's Olympic Stadium on Monday night (8), those previous outings were all but forgotten.

The bubbly sprinter said she felt different after that less than 11-second job. "I made a huge comeback and I was never counting myself out and never putting any limits on what I could do. I was excited, I still knew what I was capable of and this was a big turnaround for what's been going on so far this year," she said after her successful dash.

Williams was honest to admit that the 100m gold may not be within her reach. "I didn't think that I was going to win. I went out there expecting to do my best. And whatever my best was, hopefully it was going to be gold. And today it was," she shared her thoughts. When she reached the line, Williams said she wasn't immediately sure that the title was hers. It took a few seconds I think," she said, laughingly.

"I definitely didn't want to run across the finish line with my hands up or anything like that. I wanted to know for sure."

Although she improved her personal best to 10.91 (+1.9 wind) with her runner-up finish at Lausanne's Super Grand Prix, Williams struggled all season to improve her race consistency. It came, she said, at just the right time.

What was particularly helpful since her last outing, an 11.16 clocking in Oslo, and was finding her race rhythm in a multi-round competition. "I think that's where I built my confidence, and sometimes it's better with the rounds. I think that was the biggest adjustment from just running one race in most of the meets in Europe. Getting back to the rounds was really a good thing for me," she added.

Kenenisa Bekele and Sileshi Sihine proved it again last night, winning gold and silver for Ethiopia in the men's 10,000 metres. But so did Ivan Tikhon and Vadim Devyatovsky, doing the same thing for Belarus in the men's Hammer. Kajsa Bergqvist of Sweden came back from what could have been retirement after injury last year, to take High Jump gold, and even attempt a World record. But Emma Green, her unlikely named compatriot surprised herself and us by setting a personal best and taking bronze.

The Swede registered this year's world' s leading performance of 2.02m to take women's high jump gold She cleared 2.0m only in her second attempt but had a neat clearance in the first attempt of 2.02. She made an attempt to go for the world record but failed in all three attempts to go over 2.10m.

Meanwhile, Bekele proved himself as a worthy successor to his mentor, Haile Gebrselassie by winning his third world title . With a successful defence of his World Championships 10,000m crown, Bekele is threatening to put together a run of success that could even put even his mentor in the shade.

Even when Bekele was running in the centre of the pack for the first two-thirds of last night's race on a rain-soaked track, he was in total control.

As usual, it included several Kenyans, some of whom were running for Qatar. But when Bekele took control with nine laps of the 25 to go, it was simply a matter of who could stay closest. That proved, unsurprisingly to be his colleague, Sileshi Sihine, who also followed him home in the Olympic race last year. Bekele ran the second half of the race over 40 seconds faster than the first half, and won in 27:08.33. Sileshi Sihine clocked 27.08.87, and Moses Mosop 27.08.96.