200 metres, Women

Dutchwoman Dafne Schippers was a multi-athlete who decided to turn to full-time sprinting after a heptathlon bronze medal at the 2013 World Championships. It was a good decision, as she won the 2014 European Championships and the 2015 World Championships in the 200, adding 100 titles at the 2014 and 2016 Europeans, and came to Rio as the favorite. That role was cemented when American Allyson Felix, the top 200 runner of the last decade, failed to make the US Olympic team in this event, after nursing an ankle injury from May 2016. Schippers’ biggest challengers were thought to be Jamaican Elaine Thompson, already the Rio gold medallist in the 100, and American Tori Bowie, who had won silver in the 100 earlier in the week. Also back was Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown, the 2004 and 2008 Olympic champion and a silver medallist in London.

Campbell-Brown did not get past the heats, but Schippers, Bowie, and Thompson made it to the final, with Schippers posting the fastest time in the semis with 21.97. In the final, Thompson took the lead on the turn, with Bowie close behind, as Schippers moved into second at 70 metres, and was expected to run down Thompson on the straight. It was not to be, as Thompson increased her lead, winning in 21.78 to Schippers’ 21.88, with Bowie taking the bronze medal. Thompson became the first woman to double in the Olympic 100-200 since Florence Griffith Joyner in 1988, and the seventh overall at the Olympics.