Lisa Corrigan, the 22-year-old Australian champion, will not play any further role in these championships, after finishing 12th and last in the second semi-final of the Women's 1,500m. But the seven women from her heat who qualified for Sunday's final at least owe her a vote of thanks for shaking this event out of the torpor it endured through the first semi-final.

Corrigan, with a best of 4min 05.25sec and mindful that the first semi-final was won in 4:14.88, determined that she would at least improve her chances of appearing in a World Championship final by setting a reasonable pace and possibly picking up one of the two fast loser places on offer.

She set off with a wet sail from the gun, taking her rivals through the first lap in 74.07sec and setting the tone for the rest of the race, leading almost to 800m (2:12.71), by which point Kenya's Viola Kibiwott had taken over, tracked carefully by Yelena Soboleva, of Russia.

Now the pace really wound up, with a knot of seven women getting comfortably away from the rest, Iryna Lishchynska, of Ukraine, racing away with a 61.52 final circuit to take first place in 4:03.84, ahead of World Indoor champion Soboleva (4:03.87). Lidia Chojecka (POL), although out of the automatic qualifying top five places, was able to relax down the home straight, as was Spain's Iris Fuentes-Pila, who ran a season's best 4:06.99, safe in the knowledge that they would go through.

Despite running a Serbian record (4:08.02) and quicker than everyone in heat one, Marina Muncan was not so fortunate.

The first heat really saw seven of the runners abandon any hopes they might have had of progressing from the moment they allowed the semi to almost walk the opening lap in 74.07sec, followed by a lap of 73.10. Only then, belatedly, did Sarah Jamieson, of Australia, sprint to the front, though the damage had already been done. Ten of the runners were involved in the last-lap scramble for the first five places, and even a classy-looking 60.4 final lap, closed out by Maryam Yusuf Jamal, of Bahrain, could not radically improve the final time.

Behind Jamal, Natalya Panteleeva and Yuliya Fomenko, both of Russia, Ukraine's Nataliya Tobias, and Agnes Samaria, of Namibia, rustled up the qualifying slots.

Osaka 2007 News Team/sd