Athletics: Greene leaves Lewis-Francis in shade

Mark Lewis-Francis may have run his fastest ever 100 metres in the Golden League meeting here last night, but the world junior champion met his master as Maurice Greene bounced back to brilliant form.

Greene answered in the only manner he knows following a double defeat by Dwain Chambers – in Oslo and Sheffield last weekend – as he was in danger of losing his global ascendancy.

Having pulled out of Tuesday's Lausanne Grand Prix meeting, Greene silenced his doubters with a runaway win over his fellow American Bernard Williams in 9.99sec. But Lewis-Francis finished in third and also progressed his promising international career. He had refused to write off Greene – a long time hero of his – and the 19-year-old could not have put up a better performance.

Despite claiming to be disappointed with his outing – the world silver medallist, Tim Montgomery, was one of several top sprinters behind him – Lewis-Francis ran a personal best 10.04sec, an improvement of three hundredths of a second.

But self criticism followed from the Birchfield Harrier. "I'm not happy with that," he said. "It might be a personal best but I could have done better out there. I just felt sluggish and I didn't get going properly. At least, however, I seemed to come through the field towards the end of the race."

Chris Rawlinson produced another solid 400m hurdles to finish second behind the Dominican world champion, Felix Sanchez. A surprise winner of the Lausanne Grand Prix three days earlier, the in-form British No 1 again picked up some big scalps, but Sanchez, who had been absent from that meeting, was in unbeatable form winning in 47.91sec.

Rawlinson again defeated the European record holder, Stéphane Diagana, in a thrilling run-in off the last two hurdles. The Frenchman, and another former world champion in Italy's Fabrizio Mori who placed fourth, seem Rawlinson's likeliest rivals for next month's European Championships gold medal. Rawlinson produced a final burst off the 10th and last hurdle to slip ahead of Diagana and beat him by 0.02sec in 48.26sec.

"It's been a good week," said the 30-year-old Yorkshireman, who began it by breaking his own world best for the 300m hurdles in Sheffield last Sunday. He followed that performance with his superb Lausanne win.

Rawlinson added: "I didn't expect to beat Sanchez. On paper he's a second faster than me. But with three weeks to go, I'm No 1 in the Commonwealth and also in Europe. I managed to keep my new stride pattern throughout. Normally when I'm tired, I lose it. It was good to come back at Diagana off the last hurdle."

There was also a good performance from Kelly Holmes - third over 1500m, after a virus had ruined her training programme in recent weeks. The former Army sergeant joined in the sprint for the line with 200m remaining. But she lacked strength and she finished in 4min 6.15sec as the American Nicole Teter beat the Romanian Maria Cioncan by 0.12sec in 4:05.52.