Jamaicans rule Paris track with disappointments for local favorites

Usain Bolt's withdrawal proved to make little difference to Paris Diamond League meeting as both 100 meters saw winners from Jamaica and numbers of spectators hit another high on Saturday.

Asafa Powell made a strong comeback from a doping suspension to the Diamond Race, running the third fastest 100 meters of the year to win the men's sprint on 9.81 seconds, while fellow Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce clocked 10.74 to be the fastest woman.

"It was a great race today," said Powell who won Jamaica's trials a week ago on 9.84 to earn a spot for August's world championships in Beijing. "I worked on my start last week and it paid off."

The former world record holder, already 32, chopped 0.03 seconds off his previous season best for the title, beating local favorite Jimmy Vicaut to the second place as the Frenchman equaled the European record of 9.86.

Michael Rodgers of the United states was on the third place with a time of 9.99s, missing a chance of narrowing down the deficit to his countryman and Diamond Race leader Justin Gatlin.

Powell's time is 0.07s off pace of Gatlin's world leading record of the season.

It is Fraser-Pryce now taking the world women's 100m lead with the Paris result.

The 28-year-old two-time Olympic champion outdated the previous world best of 10.79 that she and English Gardner of the United States both had claimed last month.

She was 0.06 seconds faster than the second-placed Nigerian Blessing Okagbare-Ighoteguonor, whose 10.80 seconds also bettered the previous meeting record of 10.88, made by legendary American Marion Jones in Paris 17 years ago.

Gardner with a fastest reaction in Saturday's sprint, finished a distant third on on 10.97, leaving the American on the sixth position of the Diamond Race rankings.

"When you have good runners there, you always run fast. That is for me the motivation. We had excellent field today," said Fraser-Pryce after the race.

"I think I have room to improve, in my technique, in the start," added the treble winner in the 2013 worlds in Moscow.

The one-day elite event of track and field welcame around 46,000 spectators into the Stade de France where 75,000 seats are available, according to Laurent Boquillet, sports director of the organizers.

Local fans, however, might be not satisfied with what they saw as world record holder of men's pole vault Renaud Lavillenie failed three times at 5.86 meters, letting Greek Konstantinos Filippidis win in 5.91m.

Ethiopian Genzebe Dibaba was not happy either. She fought so tightly against compatriot Almaz Ayana to win the women's 5,000 meters race, but fell just 4.26 seconds short of her elder sister Tirunesh's seven-year exiting world mark of 14:11.15.

Olympic and world bronze medalist Gong Lijiao settled for the runner-up of shot put on 19.75m, almost half a meter off her season best, but not as disappointing as anther Chinese Lu Huihui, who declined to say anything after finishing just seventh in javelin throw.