Well, indeed, it was in the first game but Ubisoft just disabled it in order to be able to add something ''new'' in the sequel.
Ubisoft has added a new feature that should have been in the first game from the start: the sprint feature. The bad news is that it's still 19$ over the real value of that POS. The good news is that it's now available at the real price of an expansion pack, that is, 20$ or lower.
If you liked Vegas 1, chances are great that you'll like this one as well since it's clearly an expansion pack.