MELBOURNE — British Olympic long jump champion Greg Rutherford repeated his London Games triumph over Australia's Mitchell Watt with victory at the IAAF Melbourne World Challenge Saturday. Rutherford won with a best leap of 8.10 meters in the fourth round, while Watt registered 8.01m to again finish second. Fellow Australian and reigning Commonwealth Games champion Fabrice Lapierre was third with 7.99m. “Every competitor always wants to win, Mitch is a friend of mine so it is not like a bad competition ever,” Rutherford told reporters. “Ultimately he wants to beat me and I want to beat him, but we are always still mates. “I didn't think I would jump as well as I did today. An 8.10m isn't anything massively special but blimey we are in the early part of the year and waking up this morning I didn't expect to be able to jump that well so early.” Rutherford jumped 8.31m at last year's London Games to relegate favorite Watt (8.16m) to the silver medal position. In other events, Australian Olympian Josh Ross upset American Wallace Spearmon to win a thrilling 100m. His winning time of 10.25secs was four-hundredths of a second outside the B qualifier for the Moscow world championships in August. Spearmon, who ran a wind-assisted 9.92secs at last weekend's Texas Relays, was fourth in 10.29secs, having won the 200m earlier in the meet in 20.79secs. Newly-crowned world cross-country champion Japhet Korir from Kenya was an impressive winner of the 5,000m in 13:31.94. The 100m race was supposed to feature former world record-holder Asafa Powell of Jamaica, but he withdrew earlier in the week with a left hamstring injury. It was the same ailment that forced Powell to pull up in the 100m final at last year's Olympics, which was won by fellow Jamaican Usain Bolt. Calvin Smith Jr. of the US won the 400m in 46.25 seconds to maintain some family racing history in Australia. His win came 28 years after his father — former 100m world record-holder and two-time 200m world champion, Calvin Smith Sr. — won the 100m at the 1985 Australia Games in Melbourne. Other international men's winners included James Magut of Kenya in the 1,500m, Justin Gaymon in the 400m hurdles and fellow American Dusty Jonas in the high jump. Susan Kuijken of the Netherlands won the women's 1,500m. Gomez wins first race of Triathlon Series In New Zealand, Javier Gomez held out Spanish compatriot Mario Mola to win the elite men's race at Saturday's Auckland International Triathon, the first leg of the ITU World Series, claiming his fourth win from as many starts on the downtown course. Gomez completed the 1.5-km swim, 40-km cycle and 10-km run in 1 hour, 55 minutes, 51 seconds; 12 seconds ahead of Mola and 31 seconds ahead of Portugal's Joao Silva in third place. Gomez emerged from the water in fourth place behind Varga and Russians Ivan Vasiliev and Igor Polyanskiy. He then worked hard in the early stages of the eight-lap cycle to stay with the leading group and to avoid the trouble that hit some athletes further back in the field. Mola punctured on the fourth lap but managed to recover quickly to be near the front of the field starting the run. Gomez, Mola, Silva and New Zealand's Tony Dodds led early on the running leg but Silva and Dodds soon dropped off, leaving the Spanish pair to fight out the finish. Gomez was the stronger of the pair and managed to surge away in the final kilometer for his third-straight ITU victory. Mola claimed his first podium finish and Silva dug deep to take third ahead of Laurent Vidal of France. Annie Haug of Germany followed Gomez in posting back-to-back victories in Auckland when she took out the elite women's race in 2 hours, 8 minutes, 20 seconds. The German was well down after the swim, but lifted herself into contention with an exceptional first lap on the bike. She then used her trademark late sprint to clear away from a group of four competitors on the run, winning by three seconds from Maaike Caelers of the Netherlands. The next round of the Series is at San Diego on April 19. — Agencies
