Who’s the daddy now, then? Martyn Rooney had been determined to make up for missing the birth of his son on Thursday and in the final moments of these world championships the British team captain did so in euphoric fashion by snatching bronze for the men’s 4x400m relay team.
There was further joy for Britain on the final day in the Bird’s Nest as the women’s 4x400m team also won bronze to bring the team’s final medal tally to seven – four golds, a silver and two bronzes – slap bang in the middle of their medal target of six to eight.
There was no doubting the hero of the hour. As Rooney stood on the medal podium, the rest of the British team in the stands started chanting: “Rooney! Rooney!” It was the least he deserved after a captain’s performance.
The men’s team had started strongly, with Rabah Yousif and Delano Williams fighting it out with the USA and Trinidad & Tobago for the lead, only to slip back slightly on Jarryd Dunn’s third leg. When Rooney took the baton he was third but down the back straight he could only watch as the Jamaican Javon Francis blitzed from fourth to first.
Rooney, though, did not panic. As the US and Trinidad & Tobago burst past Francis, he kept his powder dry by sitting on Francis’s shoulder before driving desperately to the line. At the finish it was impossible for the human eye to discern who had got bronze. The clock, too, had Britain and Jamaica level on 2min 58.51sec. But the scoreboard eventually confirmed the standings: US gold, Trinidad & Tobago silver, Britain bronze.
“I knew when I’d crossed line that we had come third,” Rooney said. “I knew what Javon was going to do so I let him go down the back straight but at the end Javon was there to be taken so I took him.”
It was Rooney’s second world medal – to go with a 4x400m relay bronze in 2009 – which left him delighted after so many fourth-placed finishes over the years. Most though, he just wanted to get home. “I am desperate to get home now, desperate,” he said. “I don’t know it as my son yet, it’s still ‘it’. I’ve seen pictures of it but I can’t wait to meet him and hold him. I’ll name him when I get back.
“I can’t stop talking to my wife, Kate, on the phone. I keep checking on her and checking on the baby. But she’s doing really well. She went to Tesco the next day so she surprises me every day, she’s an amazing woman and I’m very lucky to have her.” Afterwards she jokingly tweeted a possible name for his child: “It’s Bronze Beijing Rooney. Just kidding guys.”
There was almost as much drama in the women’s 4x400m relay but this time the major battle was between Jamaica and the United States for gold. The Jamaicans had nearly a 10m lead after two legs but then the individual 400m champion, Allyson Felix, put in a stunning 47.7sec third leg to put the US back on top. It looked likely to stay that way until the final few strides, when Jamaica’s Novlene Williams-Mills ground down Francena McCorory to win gold in 3min 19.13sec.
Meanwhile Britain’s team of Christine Ohuruogu, Anyika Onuora, Eilidh Child and Seren Bundy-Davies ran impressively, and with few dramas to finish with a well-earned bronze – much to the delight of Ohuruogu, who had bombed in the individual 400m final. “After Thursday I had an autopsy of what went wrong because it was a tough one,” she said. “It’s the first time in 10 years I’ve made such a fatal error and it cost me, it cost me big time. So this time around I didn’t want to screw up for the team as it wasn’t just me on the line.”
The most impressive performance on the final day came in the women’s 5,000m, as Ethiopia’s Almaz Ayana put on a staggeringly display of front-running to foil the hopes of her compatriot Genzebe Dibaba of winning the 1500m and 5,000m double. The 23-year-old Ayana surged clear from Dibaba with four laps to go to win in 14min 26.83sec. Dibaba faded badly to finish third behind Senbere Teferi, who took silver in 14:44.07.
Elsewhere the brilliant Kenyan Asbel Kiprop won the 1500m world title for the third time in a row by producing a devastating late charge to go from eighth on the back straight to first. Kiprop finished in 3min 34.40sec, with his team-mate Elijah Manangoi winning silver and Morocco’s Abdelaati Iguider taking bronze.
In an exciting women’s javelin, Germany’s Katharina Molitor produced the longest throw of her career – 67.69m – to deprive China’s Lyu Huihui of gold in the last round. South Africa’s Sunette Viljoen took bronze.
There was a surprise winner in the men’s high jump, as Canada’s Derke Drouin beat China’s Guowei Zhang and Bohdan Bondarenko of Ukraine into silver with a leap of 2.34m in a jump-off.
