AFRICAN 400m women’s champion Kabange Mupopo got her chase for a first World title underway this morning at the 15th International Athletics Associations Federations (IAAF) World Championships in China at the famous Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium.
Mupopo, the former Shepolopolo captain, will be among the 42 runners in the first round of the 400m race chasing the 24 places reserved for the semi-finals.
Mupopo who has been in athletics for just two years and sliced four seconds from her time in this period has been placed in Heat-Three where her main rival will be Jamaican star runner Christine Day.
The 400m first round will have six heats and the first three runners in each heat will make the semi-finals automatically with those posting the next best six times to join the automatic 18 qualifiers.
Mupopo, who has been on the rise this year, has gone to the World Championships at the right time having improved her personal best which also happens to be the national record.
At La Chaux-de-Fonds (La Charrière) in France, Mupopo ran her best ever time in the 400m women race clocking 50.86 seconds which also became the new national record.
Day has posted a time of 50.16 seconds in the build up to this championship which equalled her personal best and is touted as favourite to win the World title.
But Mupopo’s progression in a short period of time has had the World looking at her closely and slowly, she is chipping off her time and is less than a second off the best time posted in 2015 by American runner Francena McCorory.
But McCorory is not at these Games and leaves the doors wide open with the semi-finals set for tomorrow and finals on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Sydney Siame, the other Zambian at the championship, who was conspicuously missing from the 100m list, gets his campaign underway tomorrow in the men’s 200m race.
Siame has progressed in the 200m just as much as he has in the 100m and twice reduced the times in both events.
He reduced his time to 21.27 seconds in the 200m in April this year and then three weeks ago set a new personal best of 20.53 seconds during the All-Comers Meet at Heroes Stadium in Lusaka.