A month ago, Shaunae Miller-Uibo had planned to skip the quartermile which brought her a gold at Rio 2016. The 27-year-old from the Bahamas had been working on a 200-400m double at the Tokyo Olympics but she was unhappy with the scheduling of the events and had spoken about dropping the longer race.
But Miller-Uibo, who had finished last in the 200m final, lined up for the 400m in Tokyo on Friday night and pulled off a comfortable victory in a personal best 48.36s. With that, she became the second woman after Marie-Jose Perec to take back-to-back 400m titles at the Olympics.
Felix makes history
American Allyson Felix produced a brilliant finish to take bronze. It was her 10th medal and with that she became the most decorated female track Olympian in the world. No woman has won more.
A little later Kenya's Faith Kipyogen, who had been training with legends like marathon world record holder Eliud Kipchoge and hearing their inspiring tales every day, thwarted Sifan Hassan's plans of winning a distance treble in Tokyo.
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The Eithiopia-born Hassan, who had moved to the Netherlands as a refugee at 15, made her intentions clear moving to the front from the back of the pack after the second corner in the 1500m.
But shortly after the bell, defending champion Kipyogen made a brave move, took the lead and went on to finish strongly in a new Olympic record time of 3:53.11s.
In the end World champion Sifan, who had won the 5000m gold earlier, could only take bronze behind Britain's Laura Muir.
Meanwhile, the Indian men 4x400m relay team, comprising Muhammed Anas, Noah Nirmal Tom, Arokia Rajiv and Amoj Jacob, ran a brilliant race and shattered the Asian record clocking 3:00.25s while finishing fourth in the first heat. The quartet narrowly finished ninth overall and missed entering the final.
The relay also produced the biggest surprise with Italy winning its first men's 4x100m medal since the 1948 Olympics. And this time it was gold! After Italy's Lamont Jacobs won a surprise gold in the 100m, Filipoo Tortu produced a fine anchor leg and pipped Britain's Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake, to grab the gold by one-hundredth of a second in a national record 37.50s.
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The Jamaicans appeared anxious, worried whether they had messed up the first baton exchange in the women's 4x100m relay where they finished first, till the official results announced them as winners in 41.02s.
And Joshua Cheptegei, the World champion and world record holder, ran a controlled race to take the men's 5000m gold in 12:58.15s while China's Shiying Liu won a surprise gold in women's javelin with a season-best 66.34m.
The two Indian women walkers, Priyanka Goswami (1:32.36s) and Bhawna Jat (1:37.38) finished 17th and 32nd respectively in the 20km event while Gurpreet Singh failed to finish the 50km walk.
Javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra, India's brightest hope for its first-ever Olympic medal in athletics, will be in action in Saturday's final.
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