Winds deprive Lemaitre of French 200m record

A strong following wind denied sprint champion Christophe Lemaitre another French record as he clocked 20.08secs to win the 200m at the national championships on Saturday. The time was some way quicker than the existing record of 20.16secs that Lemaitre shares with Gilles Queneherve but it does not count as the record because the wind speed registered at 2.3m/s. "That's life," said the 21-year-old triple European sprint champion. "I had it in my legs but there are other factors such as the weather conditions that I cannot control. "The most important thing is that I won the title. It has been a great three days in the stadium." The 200m remains the longest-standing record in France. Queneherve ran it when he won the silver medal at the world championships in Rome in 1987 while Lemaitre, who was born three years after Queneherve set the record, matched it in Valence last year. On Friday, Lemaitre produced a new French record for the 100m winning the event in 9.92secs. It was three-tenths of a second quicker than the previous record which he set in Stockholm on June 18 - and was the third time this season that he has brought down the record. On that occasion the wind speed was on the limit of the permissible at 2m/s and the record was allowed to stand. "It's a great time," said Lemaitre. "The conditions were ideal and it was good to rediscover the conditions and formula for championships which I had just lost a little." Lemaitre will get the chance to rub shoulders once more with the world's best at 100m and 200m at the world championships in Daegu, South Korean in August.