Chantal Petitclerc's gold medal in the 1,500-metre wheelchair event at the world track and field championships won't show up in the official standings.

And she has no idea why.

Chantal Petitclerc of Montreal reacts after crossing the finish line to win the gold medal in the women's 1,500-metre wheelchair final Saturday.
(Mark Baker/Associated Press)

The Montrealer, 37, won the event in a time of three minutes 37.10 seconds on Saturday and heard O Canada played in Nagai Stadium. She then took a victory lap to applause from the near-capacity crowd.

However, the wheelchair event is considered a demonstration sport so Canada's medal tally officially remained at one.

"It is still an exhibition event and we feel we have been exhibiting this sport for a long time," Petitclerc said. "And we don't know what more we can demonstrate or exhibit. We have been here for a week and the athletes respect us and the crowd loves it so I don't know what the problem was."

She had no problems in her race. Petitclerc took the lead from Switzerland's Edith Hunkeler on the last lap and was never in danger of relinquishing it.

As she powered down the home straight to victory, the world 110-metre hurdles champion, Xiang Liu of China, turned away from his victory ceremony to applaud each of the wheelchair competitors.

Hunkeler hung on for second behind Petitclerc while Jessica Galli of the United States took third.

"The race went according to plan," Petitclerc said. "We had to keep it cool not go in front as it's not a fast track.

"So I went to play it strategic. I wanted to win the gold and go hard the last 400 metres, which is what I did."

Diane Roy of Hatley, Que., finished sixth.

In other results, Edmonton's Tim Berrett, 42, finished 19th in the 50-kilometre race walk.

Berrett struggles

In his ninth consecutive appearance at the worlds, Berrett struggled across the finish line in a time of four hours six minutes three seconds and had difficulty walking upright.

"It wasn't about time, it was just all about position today," he said. "It was a decent result, but not quite the one I was hoping for coming into it. I was ready to have a good race and it didn't quite work out today.

"At least I held it together for a decent finish."

Australian Nathan Deakes won the race in 3:43:53 with Yohan Diniz of France second and Alex Schwazer of Italy third.

Berrett finished 11th two years ago in Helsinki and was hoping to duplicate the performance. However, he was cautioned twice for losing contact with the road and had to slow his pace.

"It was tough," Berrett said. "I had a plan to go fairly comfortably through 25k at least, but I got to 25k and then I thought, 'OK I will hold this for another 5k,' and then by 30km I had two [warning] cards.

"I was feeling comfortable, but I held back a little bit more from 30 to 35k. I don't know how many places I picked up but I picked up quite a few over the last 15 kilometres, but not as many as I thought might be the case."

Even though the race began at 7 a.m. local time, the temperatures reached 30 C and 14 athletes had to drop out because of the conditions.

Asked whether he could see himself competing in a 10th straight world championships, Berrett smiled while leaning over a barricade in the mixed zone and replied: "What a time to ask."