Powell runs strongly in Games warm-up

World record holder Asafa Powell shrugged off lingering injury concerns with a strong run at an IAAF world tour event in Melbourne yesterday, his final race before the Commonwealth Games.

Jamaican Powell eased down over the final stages of his 100 metres race but still won comfortably in 10.29 seconds after a convincing performance running into a headwind on a cold Melbourne night. Powell beat Darrell Brown, of Trinidad and Tobago, into second with a time of 10.34.

Powell earlier also anchored his Jamaican team strongly to win the men's 4x100m relay. He had not raced since he pulled up short at a London grand prix event last July, a month after he set the new world mark of 9.77 seconds in Athens, lowering Tim Montgomery's three-year-old record by 0.01.

Australian hopes suffered a big blow when Jana Pittman was ruled out with a hamstring strain but her coach and fiance Chris Rawlinson, England's 400m hurdles Commonwealth champion, said her Games campaign was not under threat.