Rudisha coasts to the final after dropping 1:43.89

Kenya’s defending champion David Rudisha coasted into the men’s Olympic 800m final after safely negotiating Saturday’s semi-finals.

Rudisha led from gun to tape in winning his heat in a season’s best of 1min 43.85sec.

Rudisha will be joined by two other Kenyans in the shape of heat winning Alfred Kipketer and Ferguson Rotich.

Pierre-Amboise Bosse of France was also a heat winner in 1:43.85 ahead of reigning Olympic 1500m champion Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria.

American duo Boris Berian and Clayton Murphy and Poland’s Marcin Lewandowski also made the final.

Two notable absentees from Monday’s final will be Ethiopian Mohammed Aman, the two-time world indoor champion and gold medallist at the 2013 world outdoors in Moscow, and Pole Adam Kszczot, silver medallist at the 2015 Beijing worlds.