“Winning like I did makes me very happy and I know to my people too,” said the Olympic champion, who beat former season leader US Terrence Trammell, by two hundredths of a second, despite this last one achieved his best time ever.

Robles had the worst reaction time in his start with 0.196; a department led by the Americans with 0.149, however, after the third hurdle he was practically the master of the race.

“I’m so happy I feel like I just won an Olympic medal,” said Robles right after the victory.

The bronze went to the American David Oliver, with a best time of life (7.44).
An example of how fast the race was is that Russian Evgueniy Borisov, fourth (7.51) stamped his best time ever.

The event included the fast Chinese Liu Xiang, who ranked seventh with 7.65, in his comeback after his operation at the end of the Beijing Olympic Games.

From the results of the eliminatory heats and semi finals here, the experts dubbed Trammell as favorite, but the American declared the first day of this contest that the race would be difficult to run and that Robles was able to win.

In the semi finals the Cuban timed the best second mark of all participants in the indoor championship with 7.56 seconds.

”He knew he was OK and that all he needed was to exploit his skills and to make an almost perfect race,” Robles’s coach, Santiago Antunez told JIT website.

Cuba finished third by points (47) and sixth in the medals (1-3-1) with a gold medal, that of Dayron Robles, three silver with triple jumper Yargelis Savigne and Yoandry Betanzos and 400 meters William Collazo and a bronze with triple jumper David Giralt.