Kristina Knott bowed out of the women’s 200 meter event in the 2020 Olympic Athletics competition after finishing in fifth in her heat, Monday at the Tokyo Olympic Stadium.
Only the top three finishers of the respective heats and the three best times will enter the semifinals set later in the evening.
The 30th Southeast Asian Games double sprint champion could only muster 23.80 seconds. She placed 37th out of the 41 runners who participated in the first round.
Knott was the fastest of the blocks with a very quick reaction time of 0.133 seconds. She continued her pace going before the final 100 and kept her place in the top three.
Nonetheless, she lost ground when Australia’s Riley Day made her move on the outside. That left her to race against Slovenia’s Mihalenic Zidar. The European eventually overtook the Filipino champion by the final 25 meters.
USA’s Jenna Prandini, as expected, delivered the wares with a 22.56 to win the final heat of the round. Still, it was the young Namibian Christine Mboma who outpaced the pack with a solid 22.11-second run. The time of Mboma is the new under-20 record for the event.
Knott, who had a personal best of 23.01 set in the SEA Games, previously contracted COVID-19. That forced her to withdraw from her last competition prior to the Olympics.
