Former LSU great and reigning world triple jump champion Walter Davis will have the opportunity to defend his title at the 2007 IAAF World Championships after advancing to the final with an impressive jump in Saturday’s qualifying round.
Davis, who won gold in the event for the United States two years ago, posted the second best qualifying mark of the evening with a jump of 56 feet, 1 ¼ inches on his first attempt.
He passed on his final two jumps of the qualifying round after his first mark hit the automatic qualifying standard for the final, which is scheduled for Monday at 6:30 a.m. CDT. Davis is also scheduled to compete in the qualifying round of the long jump beginning Tuesday at 8 p.m.
A pair of former LSU national champions also qualified for Sunday’s semifinal round of their respective specialty events during Saturday’s competition.
Isa Phillips of Jamaica advanced to the semifinal of the 400-meter hurdles with an automatic qualifying time of 49.38 seconds, while former Lady Tiger Marian Burnett of Guyana clocked the second-fastest time in her preliminary heat at 2 minutes, 0.53 seconds to continue her World Championship run in the 800 meters.
Junior All-American sprinter Richard Thompson of Trinidad and Tobago made a respectable showing in the 100-meter dash in his debut appearance at the IAAF World Championships, bowing out of the competition in the quarterfinals.
Thompson, who entered the meet with a seasonal best wind-aided time of 9.95, won his preliminary heat with a time of 10.29 into a headwind of 1.5 meters per second during the first round of qualifying on Saturday. He fell short of the semifinal round with a time of 10.44 in the quarterfinals later in the evening.