Oblique Seville joins Bolt as a Jamaican sprint champ. Jefferson-Wooden wins gold for US

TOKYO (AP) — Usain Bolt went crazy up in a luxury box.

Down below, sprinters in his country’s familiar colors -- black, green and, of course, gold --- were wreaking havoc on the track.

It was a good night for America, too, as the sport's past and the future collided in back-to-back 100-meter finals at world championships on a steamy Sunday in Tokyo.

Jamaica’s Oblique Seville and Kishane Thompson sent Bolt into celebration mode by combining for a 1-2 finish in the men’s 100-meter sprint, while defending champion Noah Lyles took bronze.

Moments earlier, America’s Melissa Jefferson-Wooden had romped to a win in a women’s sprint that featured a newcomer silver medalist in Jamaica’s Tina Clayton, a fond farewell for the island country’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, who finished sixth, and a fifth-place finish from Sha’Carri Richardson, who never found her stride this year.

“It’s a changing of the guard, in a sense,” Jefferson-Wooden said. “You’re going to see some new faces and things like that. It’s great competition.”

Seville won the men’s race in a career-best 9.77 seconds, fulfilling the promise he’s shown since he made his Olympic debut in this stadium four years ago, but didn't get out of the semifinals.

He works with Bolt’s old coach, Glen Mills, and though the sprinters don’t have much in common physically -- Seville is 5-foot-7 and Bolt is 6-4 -- they know how to race. And celebrate.

Seville was first out of the starting block, then fell behind, but kept his cool and steadily reeled in Thompson, two lanes to his left, to win the title.

The new champion paraded shirtless around the track after the race -- not exactly Bolt’s “To Di World” pose, but there’s time to improve. The LA Olympics are three years away.

“We are just rewriting history,” said Seville, the first Jamaican man to win the 100 at worlds since Bolt in 2015.

This also marked the first 1-2 finish for Jamaica in the 100 at a major championship since Bolt and Yohan Blake did it at the London Olympics in 2012.

Asked about the new crop of Jamaicans before the race, Bolt predicted the 1-2 finish. Less than an hour later, Seville and Thompson went out and proved him right.

“These guys have proven themselves throughout the season," Bolt said. “The moment is big, it's just that sometimes it's a little stressful. So hopefully they can handle that stress and get their moment.”

The 24-year-old Jefferson-Wooden turned her race into a laugher right away.

She got about a step ahead of Olympic champion Julien Alfred in the lane next to her, then kept expanding her lead and ran hard through the line when she could have coasted.

She finished in 10.61, breaking Richardson's two-year-old world-championship mark by .04.

Her margin of .15 seconds over Clayton was a blowout — the same gap Alfred, the Olympic champion who finished third this time, beat Richardson by in Paris last year.

“This year was about accepting that I wanted to be a better athlete, and putting in the work to do so,” Jefferson-Wooden said.

Richardson, who trains alongside Jefferson-Wooden, wasn’t the same runner as last year or the year before when she won worlds.

While Jefferson-Wooden jumped and shouted into the stands before draping the American flag around her shoulders, Richardson slowly paced the inside of the track with her hands on hips.

Meanwhile, the second-place finish for Clayton put Jamaica on the podium on the night its best female sprinter, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, bid adieu in the 100 with a sixth-place finish.

The “Mommy Rocket” has 16 medals at worlds with a chance for one more if she runs in next weekend’s relays.

“She’s amazing, she’s my idol and who I look up to,” Clayton said. “Competing with her was an honor.”

Another American success story came in the long-jump pit, where Tara Davis-Woodhall took care of yet another piece of unfinished business, adding the long jump world championship to the Olympic title she won last year.

The victory in Tokyo comes two years after a second-place finish at worlds left her disappointed and sparked her to rededicate herself to the sport.

And it comes four years after a sixth-place finish here in Tokyo gave her a taste of just how good she could be.

“My Olympic gold medal now has a friend,” said Davis-Woodhall, whose winning jump was 7.13 meters (23 feet, 4 3/4 inches).

Also in the field, America's Valarie Allman captured gold in the discus throw to round out her set of gold-silver-bronze from worlds. She also has two Olympic titles.

With three-time champion Joshua Cheptegei now running marathons, the men's 10,000 meters seemed like a wide-open race. Still, this was a surprise.

Jimmy Gressier of France, known mostly as a road racer, outsprinted Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelca to the finish line to bring a distance gold medal home to France.

The win comes a year after the French managed only a single silver medal at the Olympic track meet on home turf.

How will he celebrate?

“I need to sleep, but I probably won't sleep because my body is so on fire,” Gressier said.

Kenya’s Peres Jepchirchir needed a late sprint in the women's marathon to hold off Tigst Assefa of Ethiopia to win gold.

Jepchirchir also won the marathon at the Tokyo Games in 2021, when the race was moved to Sapporo because of the heat.

“When I saw I was 100 meters from the finish, I just started to kick,” Jepchirchir said. “I found some hidden energy.”

AP Sports Writer Pat Graham contributed.

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

Former sprinter, Jamaica's Usain Bolt makes his signature pose at the end of a press conference ahead of the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Japan, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Jamaica's gold medalist Oblique Seville, right, and silver medalist Kishane Thompson, pose with bronze medalist United States' Noah Lyles, left, after competing in the men's 100 meters final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Jamaica's Oblique Seville reacts after winning the men's 100 meters final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

United States' Melissa Jefferson-Wooden reacts after winning the women's 100 meters final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

United States' Melissa Jefferson-Wooden reacts after winning the women's 100 meters final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

United States' Melissa Jefferson-Wooden wins the women's 100 meters final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

United States' Melissa Jefferson-Wooden wins the women's 100 meters final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

United States' Kenneth Bednarek, Jamaica's Kishane Thompson and Britain's Zharnel Hughes race in a men's 100 meters semifinal at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

Jamaica's Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (5) runs in a women's 100 meters semifinal at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

United States' Sha'Carri Richardson, Britain's Daryll Neita and Jamaica's Shericka Jackson compete in a women's 100 meters semifinal at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

United States' Sha'Carri Richardson celebrates after qualifying for the women's 100 meters final as Britain's Amy Hunt reacts at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

United States' Sha'Carri Richardson and Britain's Daryll Neita finish a women's 100 meters semifinal at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Sunday, Sept. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek)

CHERNIHIV, Ukraine (AP) — Young athletes in northern Ukraine spend their days cross-country skiing through a scorched forest, focused on their form — until a siren inevitably shatters the silence.

They respond swiftly but without panic, ditching their skis and following coaches to an underground bomb shelter.

It’s an ordinary training session at the complex that produced Ukraine’s first Olympic medalist.

Sleeping children no longer dream of Olympic glory in the facility's bombed-out dormitories, and unexploded ordnance has rendered nearby land off limits. But about 350 kids and teens — some of the nation's best young cross-country skiers and biathletes — still practice in fenced-off areas amid the sporadic buzz of drones passing overhead then explosions as they're shot down.

“We have adapted so well — even the children — that sometimes we don’t even react,” Mykola Vorchak, a 67-year-old coach, told The Associated Press in an interview on Oct. 31. “Although it goes against safety rules, the children have been hardened by the war. Adapting to this has changed them psychologically.”

War has taken a heavy toll on Ukrainian sport. Athletes were displaced or called up to fight. Soccer matches are often interrupted by air raid sirens so attendance is capped by bomb shelter capacity. Elite skaters, skiers and biathletes usually train abroad, with attacks and frequent blackouts shuttering local facilities.

But the government-run Sports Ski Base of the Olympic Reserve is open for cross-country skiing and biathlon, the event which combines skiing with shooting. The sprawling complex is on the outskirts of Chernihiv, a city two hours north of Kyiv along the path of destruction Russia's army left in its 2022 attempt to capture the capital. Chernihiv remains a regular target for air attacks aimed at the power grid and civilian infrastructure.

Several temporary structures at the sports center serve as changing rooms, toilets and coaches’ offices. Athletes train on snowy trails during the winter and, throughout the rest of the year, use roller skis on an asphalt track pocked by blast marks.

Biathletes aim laser rifles at electronic targets and, between shooting drills, sling skis over their shoulders and jog back to the start of the course, cheeks flushed from the cold.

Valentyna Tserbe-Nesina spent her adolescence at the Chernihiv center performing these same drills, and won bronze at the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer. It was Ukraine’s first Olympic medal as an independent country.

“The conditions weren’t great, but we had nothing better. And for us, it was like a family — our own little home,” she said inside her apartment, its shelves and walls lined with medals, trophies and souvenirs from competitions around the world.

Tserbe-Nesina, 56, was shocked when she visited the complex in 2022. Shelling had torn through buildings, fire had consumed others. Shattered glass littered the floors of rooms where she and friends once excitedly checked taped-up results sheets.

“I went inside, up to my old room on the second floor. It was gone — no windows, nothing,” she said. “I recorded a video and found the trophies we had left at the base. They were completely burned.”

Tserbe-Nesina has been volunteering to organize funerals for fallen Ukrainian soldiers in her hometown while her husband, a retired military officer, returned to the front. They see each other about once a year, whenever his unit allows him brief leave.

One adult who in 2022 completed a tour in a territorial defense unit of Ukraine’s army sometimes trains today alongside the center's youngsters. Khrystyna Dmytrenko, 26, will represent her country at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics that start Feb. 6.

“Sports can show that Ukraine is strong,” Dmytrenko said in an interview next to the shooting range. “We represent Ukraine on the international stage, letting other countries, athletes and nations see our unity, strength and determination.”

The International Olympic Committee imposed bans and restrictions on Russian athletes after the invasion of Ukraine, effectively extending earlier sanctions tied to state‑sponsored doping. But a small group of them will participate in the upcoming Winter Games.

After vetting to ensure no military affiliation, they must compete without displaying any national symbols — and only in non-team events. That means Russian and Ukrainian athletes could face one another in some skating and skiing events. Moscow’s appeal at the federation level to allow its biathletes to compete is pending.

That's why many Ukrainians view training for these events as an act of defiance. Former Olympic biathlete Nina Lemesh, 52, noted that some young Ukrainians who first picked up rifles and skis at the Chernihiv ski base during wartime have become international champions in their age groups.

“Fortunately, Ukrainians remain here. They always will,” she said, standing beside the destroyed dormitories. “This is the next generation of Olympians.”

AP writer Derek Gatopoulos in Kyiv contributed to this report.

A young biathlete trains outside the destroyed ski base in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Biathlete Khrystyna Dmytrenko poses for photos outside the destroyed ski base in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

A young biathlete trains outside the destroyed ski base in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Biathletes Mykola Dorofeiev, 16, and Nazar Kravchenko, 12, left, train at the ski base in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Biathlete Khrystyna Dmytrenko poses for photos inside the destroyed ski base in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

A young biathlete trains outside the destroyed ski base in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)