Carter wins high-profile Prefontaine 200m

Xavier Carter powered past fellow American Wallace Spearmon to win a star-studded 200 metres at the Prefontaine Classic grand prix meeting on Sunday.

Carter, who beat a field that included 100m record holder Asafa Powell and Olympic 400m champion Jeremy Wariner, clocked 20.23 seconds into a solid headwind on a misty afternoon for the narrow win.

Spearmon finished second in 20.25 with Jamaican Powell third in 20.55. American Wariner was a disappointing sixth in 20.78.

Carter clocked the second fastest 200m of all-time last year (19.63 seconds) but finished fourth in a Los Angeles race last month.

"Just because I wasn't winning (earlier this year), doesn't mean I had lost it," he said.

"But all this running right here really doesn't count until you win the big one... the most important race," Carter said of August's World Championships.

Powell was glad to be going back to the 100m, beginning with Friday's Golden League meeting in Oslo.

"It was a bit too cold so I didn't try to push it," Powell said.

Hurdles competition

Olympic champion and world record holder Liu Xiang of China won the 110m hurdles in 13.23 seconds after American Dominique Arnold hit the sixth hurdle and ended seventh.

Liu, whose parents watched him race, said he was not affected by Arnold and was happy with the competition.

Kenyan Daniel K. Komen ran the fastest mile on American soil, clocking 3:48.28. Three other 2007 world-leading performances were set in the meeting at the site of the 2008 US Olympic trials.

Mozambique's Maria Mutola won the meet's women's 800m for the 15th consecutive time, running 1:58.33, Ethiopian Gelete Burka clocked 4:00.48 in the women's 1,500m and Jamaican Melaine Walker won the women's 400m hurdles in 54.14 seconds.

Olympic bronze medallist Paul Koech dominated the 3,000m steeplechase, winning in 8:08.08, and upcoming American Nick Symmonds outran Russian Olympic gold medallist Yuriy Borzakovskiy to win the men's 800m in 1:44.54.