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America's Sanya Richards secured her first global individual title when she won the women's 400 metres world title at the World Championships in Berlin.

The 24-year-old timed 49.00 seconds - the best time in the world this season - to beat home Jamaica's Shericka Williams (49.32sec) while Russia's Antonina Krivosharka (49.71sec) took the bronze.

Her great rival Great Britain's Olympic and defending world champion Christine Ohuruogu - they share a thinly veiled dislike of each other - failed to find her traditional finishing speed and finished fifth, though, in a season's best time of 50.21sec.

For the Jamaican-born Richards - she left for the United States aged 12 - it finally gave her a title to go with her dominance of the event on the Grand Prix' circuit over the past few years but which had somewhat unkindly earned her the tag of being a 'choker' when it came to major finals.

Kenyan Ezekiel Kemboi won the men's world 3000m steeplechase title to add to the Olympic title he won at the 2004 Athens Games.

In his fourth world championships, during which he has won three steeplechase silvers, Kemboi finished in a championship record of 8min 00.43sec, with compatriot Richard Mateelong producing a personal best to claim silver at 0.46sec.

But a Kenyan cleansweep of the podium, which happened at the Beijing Olympic Games, was averted when Athens bronze medallist Paul Koech eased up too soon at the line and a push in the final 10 metres saw France's Bob Tahri nip in for bronze.

American Dawn Harper's bid to add World Championship gold to her Olympic title got off to an ideal start as she eased through her first round heat in the 100 metres hurdles.

All the 25-year-old's main rivals, including Australia's Olympic silver medalist Sally McLellan, also progressed to Wednesday's next round.

Harper - who only even made the USA squad for the Olympics by squeezing into third at the trials by seven thousandths of a second - started from the relatively disadvantageous lane one but made light of it, sailing over the hurdles to take her heat in 12.70sec from Jamaica's two-time world medalist Deloreen Ennis-London.

Unsurprisingly given her exertions in the heptathlon, Great Britain's newly crowned world champion Jessica Ennis did not start the race.

Australia's best hope of a gold medal from the championships, as pole vault champion Steve Hooker is struggling with a groin injury, McLellan came back strongly to edge out Ireland's 2006 world indoor champion Derval O'Rourke.

Harper's compatriot Damu Cherry, fourth in last year's Olympic final, also won her heat from another Jamaican, the 2002 Commonwealth Games champion Lacena Golding-Clarke. The 31-year-old American, who served a two year drugs ban, led from start to finish.

The American domination of the heats came to an end when Canada's Olympic bronze medalist Priscilla Lopes-Schlier beat the United States Virginia Powell into second with Turkey's Mediterranean Games gold medalist Nevin Yant in third.

Lopes-Schlier's team-mate Perdita Felicien failed to emulate her as the 2003 world champion finished second to the 34-year-old Jamaican Brigitte Foster-Hylton in her heat as the two-time minor world medalist ran away from her to ease home.

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AFP