Rusheen McDonald wins 400m bronze at World Indoors
KINGSTON, Jamaica – Rusheen McDonald added a third medal for Jamaica when he took the bronze in the men’s 400m final, running at a massive personal best of 45.65 seconds on Saturday’s second day of the World Athletics Indoor Championships at the Glasgow Arena in Scotland.
It was a fitting reward for two hard days of work as McDonald defied the odds to become the third first-time global medal winner after Ackeem Blake in the men’s 60m on Friday and long jumper Carey McLeod earlier on Saturday morning.
McDonald, the outdoor national record holder, went into the championships with a lifetime best 47.05 seconds for the indoor 400m and knocked off almost 1.4 seconds in three races over two days.
He first ran 45.86 seconds in the first round and then 46.25 seconds in the semi-finals, both on Friday as he jumped to seventh best all-time on the Jamaican rankings.
McDonald was the fourth Jamaican man to win medals in the two-lap race joining Devon Morris who won gold in 1991, Davian Clarke won silver in 2004 and Danny McFarlane who took bronze in 2001.
Alexander Doom of Belgium ran a national record 45.25 seconds to win the gold medal, beating Norway’s Karsten Warholm who ran a season’s best 45.34 seconds.
-Paul A Reid