World Athletics Championships: 200 bitter batteries for Fausto Desalu and Filippo Tortu

There will be no Italian athletes in the semifinals of the 200 meters at the World Athletics Championships being held in Tokyo. In fact, the two most anticipated Italian athletes in the specialty, Fausto Desalu and Filippo Tortu, did not make it through the batteries and thus must cross their names off the list of aspirants for a place in the discipline’s rainbow final.

Desalu was engaged in the fourth battery, Tortu in the sixth and last. The former posted a time of 20″43, far from the 19″99 of American Noah Lyles, the 20″07 of Britain″s Zharnel Hughes and the 20″26 of Jamaica″s Christopher Taylor, who qualified with ease. The second, however, did not go beyond a time of 20″49 in the heat won by Botswana Letsile Tebogo with 20″18, ahead of the Dutchman Xavi Mo-Ajok with 20″35 and Japan″39 by Towa Uzawa.

In addition to Lyles, Jamaica’s Bryan Levell with 19″84, Zimbabwe’s Tapiwanashe Makarawu with 19″91 and Americans Courtney Lindsey and Kenneth Bednarek with 19″95 and 19″98, respectively, also fell under 20 seconds during the heats. Lyles is the defending champion in the specialty: in 2023 in Budapest he won the final with a time of 19″52.

The 200-meter flat race is one of the most eagerly awaited in athletics events: the recordman among men is Usain Bolt, who at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin ran an incredible 19″19, while as far as the women’s race is concerned, the world record has remained since 1998 that of the late Florence Griffith-Joyner, who set a time of 21″34 at the Seoul Olympic Games.