Clarke wins Pan-American 100m

Jamaica’s Lerone Clarke pipped former world champion Kim Collins of Saint Kitts and Nevis to claim the gold medal in the 100 metres at the Pan-American Games on Tuesday.

In the absence of the event’s heavyweights, such as Usain Bolt, 29-year-old Clarke, who won the Commonwealth Games title last year, took the honours in a time of 10.01sec, with Collins second in 10.04sec and Trinidadian Emmanuel Callender taking bronze in 10.16sec.

“I wanted to run relaxed and focused on my own race, without worrying about the others, and that’s what I did,” said Clarke, who won a gold medal in the 4x100m relay alongside Bolt at the 2009 world championships.

Clarke’s winning time was just two hundredths of a second short of his personal best 9.99sec which he ran in 2009.

AFP