Wind assists Hooker to eye-popping 100m time

Former collegiate champion Marshevet Hooker ran an eye-popping but wind-assisted 10.76 seconds to lead the women's 100 metres qualifying on the opening day of the American Olympic trials on Friday.

No woman has run faster under any conditions since disgraced American sprinter Marion Jones clocked 10.68 seconds in 2000.

The wind on the quarter-final race was 3.4 metres per second, well above the accepted 2.0mps.

"I stuttered a little bit (at the start) but I just kept running," said the 23-year-old Hooker, who trains with men's world 100 metres champion Tyson Gay's co-coach, Jon Drummond.

"Only God knows how fast I can run," said Hooker, who has a legal best of 10.94 seconds this year.

"It was fast, very fast. I hope she is tired," said former world champion Torri Edwards, who had the second-best time of the quarter-finals, a wind-assisted 10.85 seconds.

Another former world champion, Olympic silver medallist Lauryn Williams, and current women's 200 metres world champion Allyson Felix also advanced to the semi-finals.

Chryste Gaines, who served a two-year suspension as a part of the BALCO doping scandal, was among those eliminated.

In other qualifying, world champion Brad Walker dominated preliminaries in the pole vault, clearing 5.60 metres.

The trials opened on a moving note with members of the 1980 United States Olympic team walking on the Hayward Field track in Oregon to loud applause.

The US boycotted the 1980 Moscow Games because of Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, denying future world record holders Edwin Moses and Renaldo Nehemiah and others an opportunity to compete.