Team Europe Media Guide - European AthleticsNaide Gomes (long jump), Ukraine’s Olga Saladuha...

Team Europe Media Guide

IAAF Continental CupSplit, Croatia - 4-5 September 2010

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Foreword

Just over a month after the curtain fell on a memorable European Athletics Cham-pionships in Barcelona, the best of our continent’s athletes are set to compete in the IAAF Continental Cup in Split.

In a revamped version of the IAAF World Cup, Europe competes against Africa, the Americas and Asia-Pacific. The se-lection of members for Team Europe has been based on results from the Eu-ropean championships that took place through 27 July to 1 August.

It has been a busy month since our flagship event in terms of finalising our team for the Continental Cup but we arrive in Split confident of our athletes repeating their fantastic performances from Barcelona.

Team Europe were regular finishers in the top three of the men’s and women’s competitions at the World Cup, with both winning of two occasions. In 2006, the European men and Russian women claimed top honours. This time around, with team standings determined by the

overall points total of men and women combined, it will be extremely interes-ting to see how a united Team Europe fares against the other continents.

The combining of men’s and women’s points is something European Athletics introduced in the inaugural SPAR Euro-pean Team Championships in Leiria so that we could really see which country deserved to lay claim to the title of Euro-pean Team Champion. Let us now see who is deserving of the title of “Conti-nental Champion.”

The forward-thinking changes we made with the SPAR European Team Cham-pionships show how much we value team competitions such as the Conti-nental Cup. These events are interesting and exciting for spectators and a diffe-rent way of presenting our sport. I hope you enjoy the competition and find this media guide a useful companion during the weekend. Hansjörg Wirz,European Athletics President

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Team Europe out to lay claim to title of ‘Continental Champion’

Team Europe - MEN As of 25.08.10

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100m Christophe LEMAITRE FRA100m Mark LEWIS-FRANCIS GBR200m Christian MALCOLM GBR200m Martial MBANDJOCK FRA400m Kevin BORLÉE BEL400m Michael BINGHAM GBR800m Marcin LEWANDOWSKI POL800m Michael RIMMER GBR1500m Arturo CASADO ESP1500m Yoann KOWAL FRA1500m Andy BADDELEY GBR3000m Mateusz DEMCZYSZAK POL3000m Noureddine SMAÏL FRA3000m Daniele MEUCCI ITA5000m Bob TAHRI FRA5000m Serhiy LEBID UKR5000m Mert GIRMALEGESE TUR3000m SC Mahiedine MEKHISSI-BENABBAD FRA3000m SC José Luis BLANCO ESP3000m SC Ion LUCHIANOV MDA110m H Andy TURNER GBR110m H Garfield DARIEN FRA400m H David GREENE GBR400m H Heni KECHI FRAHJ Aleksander SHUSTOV RUS

HJ Martyn BERNARD GBRPV Renaud LAVILLENIE FRAPV Maksym MAZURYK UKRLJ Christian REIF GERLJ Kafétien GOMIS FRATJ Phillips IDOWU GBRTJ Marian OPREA ROUSP Tomasz MAJEWSKI POLSP Andrei MIKHNEVICH BLRDT Piotr MALACHOWSKI POLDT Robert HARTING GERHT Libor CHARFREITAG SVKHT Nicola VIZZONI ITAJT Andreas THORKILDSEN NORJT Matthias DE ZORDO GER4x100m Teddy TINMAR FRA4x100m Christophe LEMAITRE FRA4x100m Pierre-Alexis PESSONNEAUX FRA4x100m Martial MBANDJOCK FRA4x100m Imaad HALLAY FRA4x400m Kevin BORLÉE BEL4x400m Michael BINGHAM GBR4x400m Martyn ROONEY GBR4x400m Vladimir KRASNOV RUSReserve Mihail DUDAŠ SRB

Team Europe - WOMEN As of 25.08.10

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100m Verena SAILER GER100m Ezinne OKPARAEBO NOR200m Yelizaveta BRYZHINA UKR200m Aleksandra FEDORIVA RUS400m Tatyana FIROVA RUS400m Libania GRENOT ITA800m Mariya SAVINOVA RUS800m Jennifer MEADOWS GBR1500m Hind DEHIBA FRA1500m Lisa DOBRISKEY GBR1500m Asli ÇAKIR TUR3000m Alemitu BEKELE TUR3000m Sara MOREIRA POR3000m Anna ALMINOVA RUS5000m Elvan ABEYLEGESSE TUR5000m Mariya KONOVALOVA RUS5000m Jessica AUGUSTO POR3000m SC Yuliya ZARUDNEVA RUS3000m SC Hatti DEAN GBR3000m SC Sophie DUARTE FRA100m H Nevin YANIT TUR100m H Derval O’ROURKE IRL400m H Natalya ANTYUKH RUS400m H Vania STAMBOLOVA BULHJ Blanka VLASIC CRO

HJ Emma GREEN SWEPV Svetlana FEOFANOVA RUSPV Lisa RYZIH GERLJ Ineta RADEVICA LATLJ Naide GOMES PORTJ Olha SALADUHA UKRTJ Simona LA MANTIA ITASP Nadzeya OSTAPCHUK BLRSP Olga IVANOVA RUSDT Sandra PERKOVIC CRODT Nicoleta GRASU ROUHT Betty HEIDLER GERHT Tatyana LYSENKO RUSJT Linda STAHL GERJT Mariya ABAKUMOVA RUS4x100m Olesya POVH UKR4x100m Nataliya POHREBNYAK UKR4x100m Mariya RYEMYEN UKR4x100m Yelizaveta BRYZHINA UKR4x100m Olena CHEBANU UKR4x400m Kseniya USTALOVA RUS4x400m Antonina KRIVOSHAPKA RUS4x400m Tatyana FIROVA RUS4x400m Libania GRENOT ITAReserve Nataliya DOBRYNSKA UKR

Team Management

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Head of Delegation Karel PILNÝ (CZE) Christian MILZ (SUI)Team Leader Sylvia BARLAG (NED) Dobromir KARAMARINOV (BUL)Team Media Liaison James MULLIGAN (GBR) +41 79 694 48 29Team Attache Marcel WAKIM (GER) Ede RUTKOVSZKY (HUN)Coach Sprints Valentin MASLAKOV (RUS)Coach Sprints / 4x100m Vincent CLARICO (FRA)Coach Long Sprints Jacques BORLEE (BEL)Coach Long Distance Nikola BORLIC (TUR) Phillipe DUPONT (FRA)Coach Vertical Jumps Evgeny BONDARENKO (RUS) Bojan MARINOVIC (CRO)Coach Horizontal Jumps Oleksandr APAYCHEV (UKR) Ludmila OLIJAR (LAT)Coach Throws Helge ZOELLKAU (GER) Uladzimir Siutsou (BLR)Team Doctor Vasily AVRAMENKO (RUS) Isabel CRESPO (POR)Team Physio Frank ZANDER (GER) Nathalie COUTANCEAU (FRA) Vasily BASHKATOV (RUS) Alejandro GALAN (ESP) Gerry RAMOGIDA (GBR)

Team Europe - Facts & Figures

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• 31reigningEuropeanchampionsfromBarcelonawillcompeteinSplit.

• RussiahasmostathletesinTeamEurope,15.GreatBritainandNorthernIrelandandFrancearesecondwith14.

• GreatBritainandNorthernIrelandhasmostathletesinindividualeventswith13.

• 22differentnationalitiesarerepresentedinTeamEurope.

• AndreasThorkildsenofNorwayistheonlypreviouswinnerintheteam.Hewonthejavelinin2006.

• GreatBritainandN.I.’sMarkLewis-Francis(4x100m),France’sMahiedineMekhissi-Benabbad(1500m),BobTahri

(3000msteeple),Romania’sMarianOprea(triplejump),Bulgaria’sVanyaStambolova(400m/4x400m),Portugal’s

NaideGomes(longjump),Ukraine’sOlgaSaladuha(triplejump)andRussia’sTatyanaLysenko(hammer)competed

forTeamEuropein2006.Ukraine’sSerhiyLebid(3000m)andRussia’sSvetlanaFeofanova(polevault)competedin

2002 and Romania’s Nicoleta Grasu (discus) in 1998.

• TheoldestmanintheteamisSpain’sJoseLuisBlanco(b.3.6.75)andoldestwomanisRomania’sNicoletaGrasu

(b. 11.9.71).

• TheyoungestmanisFrance’sChristopheLemaitre(b.11.6.90)andyoungestwomanisCroatia’sSandraPerkovic

(b. 21.6.90).

Christophe Lemaitre (FRA) 100m, 4x100m

Born: 11.06.90 Height: 189 cm Weight: 74kg Club: AS Aix-les-Bains

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Major championships record:

WorldChampionships: 100m:H/2009 EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 100m:1/2010,200m:1/2010,4x100m:1/2010WorldJuniorChampionships: 200m:1/2008EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships: 100m:1/2009,4x100m:H/2009

Personal Bests:100m:9.98NR(2010),200m:20.16(=NR)(2010)Season’s Bests:100m:9.98Valence9.7.10,200m:20.16Valence10.7.10

Christophe Lemaitre made history at the Euro-pean championships this year by becoming the first man ever to win the golden treble of 100m, 200m and the 4x100m relay. Discovered late, at the age of 15 in 2005, his talent began to flou-rish in 2008 when he clocked 10.26 in the French championships. That same year he took his first titles when he did the double at the world juniors in Poland.

In 2009 he set a European junior record of 10.04 but at the Berlin World Championships he failed to progress beyond the quarter finals when he was disqualified for a false start.

That bitter memory was to propel him to grea-ter heights this year when in the national cham-pionships in Valence he dipped below 10 seconds for the first time with 9.98, becoming the fastest sprinter in Europe, and equalled the French re-cord in the 200m. He lost to world and European indoor champion Dwain Chambers at the SPAR European Team Championships but only by a slender margin of 0.03.

Could he turn the tables at the callow age of 20 years and 45 days on the ageing legs of 32-year-old Chambers in Barcelona? In short, the answer was an emphatic yes. By winning in Barcelona, Le-maitre bridged a gap of 48 years, becoming the first Frenchman since Claude Piquemal in 1962 to lift 100m gold. “After a brilliant year my objective was gold,” said the newly minted champion.

“I didn’t have a good start in the final but picked up very well on my speed. It was a brilliant final and I’m very, very happy tonight.”

Coming off the bend in the 200m he was adrift of Britain’s Christian Malcolm but just managed to win by 0.02. “It was a very tight race. My start was not as good as I expected. I had a lack of confidence in the middle of the race. I tried to do my best to pick up well during the last metres.” When he is not on the track, Lemaitre, who ob-tained his Baccalaureat in 2010, likes going out with his friends, watching television or being on his computer.

Mark Lewis-Francis (GBR) 100m

Born: 04.09.1982 Height: 185 cm Weight: 86 kg Club:Birchfield


OlympicGames: 4x100m:1/2004,sf/2004WorldChampionships: 4x100m:3/2007,Q/2005,sf/2003,sf/2001EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 100m:2/2010,5/2006WorldIndoorChampionships: 60m:4/2003,3/2001WorldJuniorChampionships: 100m:1/2000

Mark Lewis-Francis went to the European cham-pionships as Britain’s second string to Dwain Chambers, but came away with silver while Chambers, hampered by a hamstring injury, could manage no higher than fifth. “I finished second, I can’t believe it. I’m the happiest man on the planet right now,” said Lewis-Francis as he came off the track.

“It’s been an amazing race. Incredible. I just want to say that Dwain Chambers has been my inspira-tion since I was a little kid. No matter what happe-ned in the past, he’s a brilliant athlete.”

After a promising junior career, Lewis-Francis did not quite live up to his promise in the senior ranks, but made more of a name for himself as a relay anchor, famously winning gold at the Athens

Olympics, defeating the more fancied Ameri-cans, before adding two relay bronzes in the World Championships.

As a junior he lifted the inaugural world youth title in 1999. In 2000, he stormed to a 10.10 per-sonal best in August which was enough to gua-rantee him a place on the 4x100m relay team for the Olympic Games in Sydney. But he opted to concentrate on the World Junior Championships in Santiago, where he was one of the stars of the championships, winning gold medals in the 100m and 4x100m.

Lewis-Francis also holds British age-group re-cords at 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18. Lewis-Francis will be representing England in the upcoming Com-monwealth Games.

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Personal Bests:100m:10.04(2002),200m:20.78(2005)Season’s Best: 100m: 10.18 Barcelona 28.7.10

Christian Malcolm (GBR) 200m

Born:3.6.1979 Height: 174 cm Weight: 66 kg Club: Cardiff AAC

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OlympicGames: 200m:5/2000&2008WorldChampionships: 100m:6/2001,200m:5/2001EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 200m:2/2002&2010WorldIndoorChampionships: 200m:2/2001EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 200m:1/2000

Personal Bests:100m:10.11(2001),200m:20.08(2001)Season’s Best: 20.38(-0.8)Barcelona30.7.10

Christian Malcolm bagged the 200m silver medal in Barcelona in a season’s best of 20.38 to make his first individual podium outdoors at a major championship. At this year’s Europeans the Welsh star led the field until the last metre when French sensation Christope Lemaitre pipped him.

“I didn’t see Lemaitre, I didn’t even hear him come. I didn’t dip because I really thought I got it. I knew I was very strong. It’s unbelievable. Still I’m satisfied with the silver, it’s been a difficult year for me.”From a young age Malcolm was earmarked as one of the most promising sprint talents in the world, underlined by his world junior sprint double in 1998 in Annecy.

He won the title of World Junior Athlete of the Year in 1998 after winning the 200m gold at that year’s

World Junior Championships in 20.44 seconds. At the 1998 Commonwealth Games his 20.29 for the silver medal was a European junior and Welsh se-nior record.

He landed the 2000 European indoor gold medal in Gent, clocking 20.54 for a Welsh indoor record. Later that season, he excelled at the 2000 Olym-pics in Sydney to take fifth place at 200m in 20.23 aged only 21.

In 2001, he took the world indoor silver medal in Lisbon before running a staggering eight races at the World Championships in Edmonton to make the finals of the 100m and the 200m. His 5th place finish in the 200m final at the 2008 Beijing Games repeated his result from the 2000 Sydney Olym-pics.

Martial Mbandjock (FRA) 200m, 4x100m

Born: 14.10.1985 Height: 187 cm Weight: 84 kg Club: Asptt Lille Metropole


OlympicGames: 100m:H/2008WorldChampionships: 200m:H/2009;100m:H/2007,6s1/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 100m:3/2010,200m:3/2010,4x100:3/2010EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 100m:3/2007

Martial Mbandjock enjoyed a sensational Euro-pean championships in Barcelona by taking no fewer than three medals, two bronzes at both the 100m and 200m events plus a gold medal as part of the French 4x100m relay team. Although his achievements were somewhat overshadowed by his compatriot Christophe Lemaitre, who won all the three races, the 24-year-old’s breakthrou-gh was impressive as his best international result so far dated back to 2007 when he claimed the 100m bronze medal at the European U23 cham-pionships in Debrecen.

In a thrilling photo-finish for the second to fifth pla-ces, Mark Lewis-Francis, Mbandjock, European champion Francis Obikwelu and pre-race favou-rite Dwain Chambers waited for what seemed an eternity for the result to flash up on the stadium screen. Finally, their times were taken down to the

thousandths, and Mbandjock’s 10.173 proved to be enough for the bronze.

“We knew that it will be a tight final after the heat. I was going for a medal ... and I’m happy to have climbed the podium. Christophe is the strongest European, he is unbeatable at the moment. But I’m a competitor and his performances are a motivation for me to become even better,” said Mbandjock.

His career best 10.06 dates back to 2008 when he took the French title in Albi while he has improved his 200m best to 20.38 this year in Tomblaine.

Mbandjock joined the elite company of compa-triot Lemaitre and Myriam Soumaré by accumu-lating three medals in Barcelona.

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Personal Bests:100m:10.06(2008),200m:20.38(2010)Season’s Best: 20.38Tomblaine25.6.10

Kevin Borlée (BEL) 400m, 4x400m

Born: 22.02.88 Height: 181 cm Weight: 62 kg Club:FloridaStateUniversity,WS

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OlympicGames: 400m:sf/2008,4x400m:5/2008WorldChampionships: 400m:sf/2009,4x400m:4th/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 400m:1/2010,4x400m:3/2010WorldJuniorchampionships: 400m:sf/2006,4x400m:4th/2006WorldYouthchampionships: 200m:sf/2005EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships: 400m:sf/2007

Personal Bests: 44.88 (2008)Season’s Best: 45.08Barcelona30.7.10

Kevin Borlée may forever be known as the wrong brother. Everyone expected it to be Jonathan Borlée who claimed Belgium’s first ever European 400m title, but brother Kevin stole the show with a dramatic victory in one of the closest finals ever.

It was Jonathan – the older twin by five minutes - who’d set three national records this year, inclu-ding one in the semi-finals, but Kevin held his form to come from fifth with 50m left to win in 45.08. “Tonight it was not easy but I handled the race at the end,” said Kevin who was the first Belgian man to become European champion since 1971.

The twins are not international athletes by chan-ce. Their father and coach Jacques was an inter-national 400m runner and their elder sister Olivia

is a sprinter with Olympic and world relay medals to her name.

Although Kevin set a Belgian record of 44.88 in the Olympic semi-final it was Jonathan who had shown most before Barcelona. Both attended Florida State University in Tallahassee, USA, where Kevin is still a student of physiotherapy. They both suffered the same stress fracture – the tarsus - in 2009, Kevin’s diagnosed six weeks after Jona-than.

A world youth 200m semi-finalist in 2005, Borlée has been close to world and Olympic relay ho-nours in recent years, but never won a major championship medal until Barcelona, when he came away with two.

Michael Bingham (GBR) 400m, 4x400m

Born:13.04.86 Height: 186 cm Weight: 79 kg Club: Wake Forest


OlympicGames: 4x400m:4/2008WorldChampionships: 400m:7/2009,4x400m:2/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 400m:2/2010,4x400m:2/2010

Michael Bingham won a European silver by less than the thickness of his vest in Barcelona. Bin-gham crossed the line in the same time as his team-mate Martyn Rooney but was given the bri-ghter coloured medal on a photo finish. Running blind from lane eight, Bingham looked on for a narrow victory until Borlee made his late charge.

“I panicked. It definitely should have been a dif-ferent colour,” he lamented afterwards.

Born in the USA, Bingham has had a British pass-port since August 2007 and was cleared by the IAAF to run for Britain in April 2008. His father Nor-ris is British and lives in Nottingham (Bingham is a Nottingham Forest fan), but Bingham grew up with his mother and four siblings in Winston-Sa-lem, a small town in North Carolina known as the

home of the Krispy Kreme doughnut. In 2005 he won a bronze medal for USA in the decathlon at the Pan-American junior championships.

He helped Britain to fourth in the 4x400m relay at the Beijing Olympics before finishing seventh in the World Championships final last summer. He studied politics and economics at Wake Forest University, for whom he won a US collegiate in-door title last year and says if he wasn’t an athlete he’d work in public law or policy.

Bingham often trains with the Borlee twins in Flori-da but is based at Loughborough University in the British midlands throughout the outdoor season where he trains with Rooney and Ireland’s David Gillick.

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Personal Best: 44.74 (2009)Season’s Best: 44.88 Barcelona 28.7.10

Marcin Lewandowski (POL) 800m

Born:13.6.1987 Height: 178 cm Weight: 60 kg Club: UKL Ósemka Police

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OlympicGames: 800m:7s1/2008WorldChampionships: 800m:8/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 800m:1/2010EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 800m:1/2007,2/2009EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 800m:6/2009

Personal Bests:800m:1:43.84(2009),1500m:3:40.38(2010)Season’s Best: 1:44.30Lausanne8.7.10

Marcin Lewandowski became the first Pole to capture the men’s 800m gold in the history of the European championships. Ironically, Lewandows-ki is now the European champion but he doesn’t hold the European under-23 title as he finished second last year in Kaunas behind Adam Kszc-zot, who bagged the bronze medal in Barcelona. The exploits of Lewandowski and Kszczot helped Poland join the league of Great Britain and Ger-many as the only countries to have produced multiple medallists in the event at the European championships.

Lewandowski produced a thrilling run on the home stretch to overtake Great Britain’s Michael Rimmer who was well in the lead entering the ho-mestretch. In an unforgettable final 100m run, the 23-year-old Pole was bit by bit gaining on Rimmer

and finally came home first in 1:47.07, just one tenth of a second ahead of the Briton.

“I’m extremely happy since I was under a lot of pressure before the race as I was tipped as one of the favourites alongside Rimmer. Winning gold and bronze at one event is an outstanding suc-cess for Polish athletics,” he said.

Coached by his own brother Tomasz, Lewan-dowski first came to prominence on the interna-tional scene by finishing fourth at the World Junior Championships in Beijing back in 2006. One year later he clinched the European under-23 title in Debrecen and made his first senior outdoor final at the Berlin worlds last year when he finished ei-ghth, one month after setting his current career best of 1:43.84 in Monaco.

Michael Rimmer (GBR) 800m

Born:3.2.1986 Height: 180 cm Weight: 71 kg Club: Liverpool Pembroke Sefton


OlympicGames: 800m:6s3/2008WorldChampionships: 800m:6s3/2007,7s3/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 800m:2/2010,8/2006

Since his early days in athletics, Michael Rimmer has been hailed as the man to carry forward Britain’s extraordinary legacy in the 800m of the Coe-Cram-Ovett era and he proved at the Euro-peans in Barcelona that he is on the right cour-se. In a fierce battle with the Polish runners, the 24-year-old managed to keep his place between them to grab silver, an extraordinary improve-ment on his eighth spot from the previous cham-pionships in Göteborg.

“My preparation for the championships went ac-cording to plan without any difficulties. I really wanted the gold medal and I’m disappointed to have been pipped into second place. My perso-nal target and my main focus was to get the gold medal this time and this will continue to be my target next time,” he said.

Before Barcelona Rimmer’s campaigns at major

championships have always been affected by situations beyond his control. His build-up to the Beijing Olympic Games was disrupted by food poisoning, which he picked up at the holding camp in Macau. Although the Southport runner comfortably came through his first-ever Olympic race in 1.47.61 it was not what his fans expected of him. Last year in Berlin, he could not make it to the finals after a prolonged illness before the worlds drastically hampered his preparations. Among his domestic accolades, Rimmer is the first male 800m runner in British history to win national titles in under 15, 17 and 20 years age categories and also as a senior athlete. His personal best is 1.44.49 set in Lausanne in 2010 which places him 8th on the UK all time list and is the fastest time by any British athlete in 17 years. Last July he beca-me the first male 800m runner in history to win five consecutive British senior titles in Birmingham.

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Personal Bests:800m:1:44.49(2010),1500m:3:41.1(2010)Season’s Best: 1:44.49 Lausanne 8.7.10

Arturo Casado (ESP) 1500m

Born:26.1.1983 Height: 187 cm Weight: 78 kg Club: C.A. Adidas

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WorldChampionships: 1500m:5/2005,7/2007EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 1500m:1/2010,6/2004WorldIndoorChampionships: 1500m:4/2008EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 1500m:4/2005,3/2007,5/2009

Personal Bests:800m:1:45.52(2009),1500m:3:33.14(2008)Season’s Best: 3:35.02Barcelona9.7.10

Fully determined to improve on his fourth place from Göteborg 2006, Spain’s Arturo Casado crossed the finish line first in the men’s 1500m at the European championships to complete a hat-trick of European medals in different age cate-gories. He already had a successful junior pedi-gree, having taken the European bronze medal in Grosseto, Italy, back in 2001; four years later he was an overwhelming champion at the European under-23 championships held in Erfurt, Germany. Even after finishing second at the Spanish cham-pionships behind Barcelona bronze medallist Manuel Olmedo, Casado’s win at this year’s Eu-ropeans can count among the most convincing ones at the championships. It was with some 200m to go that he edged ahead to build a mas-sive margin of nearly a second (3:42.74 v 3:43.52) over his closest competitor, Germany’s Carsten Schlangen.

“I always dreamt of a win but I was sure that, in a tactical race, it will be a photo-finish final so I’m surprised that I managed a sizeable margin on the rest over the home stretch. But I never looked back and was not aware of my clear advantage. The only thing I thought was ‘they are going to catch up with me at any time’ but luckily it didn’t happen,” he said.

Casado is the third Spaniard to become Euro-pean 1500m champion following in the footsteps of Fermín Cacho (1994) and Reyes Estévez (1998). He had already shown a lot of ability at the age of 22 by taking an unexpected fifth place at the World Championships in Helsinki. In addition to these accolades, Casado captured bronze when Spain managed an unforgettable clean sweep of medals at the European indoor championships in Birmingham 2007.

Yoann Kowal (FRA) 1500m

Born: 28.5.1987 Height: 172 cm Weight: 58 kg Club: Ca Perigueux Athletisme


WorldChampionships: 1500m:8h3/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 1500m:5/2010EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 1500m:3/2009EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 3000msteeplechase:11/2007

France’s Yoann Kowal missed the 1500m bronze medal at the Europeans in Barcelona by a mere eleven hundredths of a second but aged only 23 he should be one of the leading athletes at the continental level in the years to come.

Kowal’s father Daniel became French champion in the 3000m steeplechase, and by the early age of 4 Yoann began to practise athletics in Font Romeu. Mehdi Baala’s inspired silver medal win at the 2003 World Championships in Paris had a major impact on Kowal, who witnessed his com-patriot’s exploits from the stands.

After contesting the 3000m steeplechase at the world juniors in Beijing 2006 and the European U23 championships in Debrecen the following year Kowal turned to the 1500m event and his de-

cision soon paid dividends as he managed to run inside the qualifying time for both the 2008 world indoors in Valencia and the Beijing Olympics. Al-though he could not make it to the French team on both the occasions, Kowal did not give up and registered a massive career best of 3:35.95 in Paris.

Kowal’s breaktrough in terms of major events came the following winter when he bagged the bronze medal at the European indoor cham-pionships in Torino behind Portugal’s former Olympic bronze medallist Rui Silva and Spain’s Diego Ruiz.

Rather surprisingly, the 23-year-old Kowal is not a full-time athlete as he works as a carpenter 28 hours a week.

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Personal Bests:800m:1:47.95(2010),1500m:3:35.14(2010)Season’s Best: 3:35.14Roma10.6.10

Andy Baddeley (GBR) 1500m

Born: 20.6.1982 Height: 186 cm Weight: 69 kg Club:Harrow/CambridgeUni

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OlympicGames: 1500m:8/2008WorldChampionships: 1500m:9/2007EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 1500m:6/2010:EuropeanCup: 3000m:1/2008

Personal Bests:800m:1:46.32(2007)1500m:3:34.36(2008)Mile:3:49.38(2008)Season’s Best: 3:34.50Gateshead10.7.10

Andy Baddeley established himself as Britain’s top miler in 2006 and has been a stalwart in major championships finals since his breakthrough at the Göteborg European championships where he finished sixth.

Baddeley made great headway in the summer of 2007, beating the likes of Bernard Lagat in Shef-field, before making the world final in Osaka.

He was in the form of his life in 2008 as he took an unexpected win in the famous Dream Mile race in Oslo – the first by a British athlete since Peter Elliott in 1991 – before winning the European Cup over 3000m, but an Achilles injury wrecked his medal chances in the Olympic Games final, when he finished ninth.

Despite suffering from injury in the lead up to the

Berlin worlds the following season Baddeley qua-lified for the semi-finals. However an untimely foot injury necessitated him being on crutches 24 hour before his semi-final. Baddeley courageously ran the semi-final on a pain-killing injection, but ex-pectedly ran well below his potential.

After Berlin his form picked up and he had good runs in the Gateshead GP, Rieti, BUPA 5km road race in Regents Park and the Great North City Games road mile, and finished his season in style by winning the prestigious Fifth Avenue Mile in New York.

Baddeley runs with an electrocardiogram in his chest because of an irregular heartbeat. He has a first-class honours degree from Cambridge Uni-versity in aerospace engineering and used to be a part-time lecturer at St. Mary’s.

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Mateusz Demczyszak (POL) 3000m

Born: 18.1.86 Height: 176 cm Weight: 62 kg Club:WKSSlaskWroclaw


EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 1500m:8/2010EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 3000msteeple:9/2007EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships: 3000msteeple:5/2005

Personal Bests:1500m3:38.72;3000msteeplechase8:26.31Season’s Best: 1500m3:38.72Wattenscheid26.6.2010;3000msteeplechase8:26.31Prague14.6.2010

Mateusz Demczyszak first came to the attention of athletics fans outside Poland when he finished fifth in the 3000m steeplechase at the 2005 Euro-pean Athletics Junior Championships, in Kaunas, Lithuania, in a personal best of 8:57.24. This was after running under nine minutes for the first time when finishing second at the Polish junior cham-pionships earlier that July.

He then made rapid improvement over the next two years, setting what was then a personal best of 8:30.81 in 2007, and there were predictions that he had the potential to follow in the footsteps of other historic greats of Polish steeplechasing such as Bronislaw Malinowski and Boguslaw Maminski.

In the next two years though, his progress over the barriers stalled as he switched his attention to the 1500m, but he still remains keen on the steeple-chase and improved his personal best to 8:26.31 in June.

In his first major senior international championship, Demczyszak finished eighth in Barcelona but was still in contention for a medal until 250m from home, finishing less than two seconds behind Spanish winner Arturo Casado, and he produced the best Polish performance in the event since Henryk Szordykowski won silver in 1971.

“Now, my aim is to do well at next year’s World Military Championships in Brazil, using it as an in-termediate step towards the Olympics in London in 2012,” said the Polish army sergeant, who got married on 14 August.

Demczyszak comes from a sporting family. His father was a rower and mother a good long dis-tance runner. He intends to go on honeymoon with his bride Monike in Croatia immediately af-ter representing Team Europe.

Noureddine Smaïl (FRA) 3000m

Born: 6.2.1987 Height: 181 cm Weight: 64 kg Club: Livry Gargan Athletisme

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EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 5000m:5/2010EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 5000m:1/2007,2/2009SPAREuropeanCrossCountryChampionships: U-23:1/2009EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 3000m:9h1/2009

Personal Bests:3000m:7:53.34(09);5000m:13:32.15(10),3000msteeplechase:8:22.67(10)Season’s Best: 3000m:7:55.70(indoor)Gent14/02/10

Noureddine Smaïl moved to France at a young age, received French nationality on 1 December 2005 and first competed for his adopted country in 2006 when he took part at the Beijing world junior championships, where he finished a cre-ditable eighth with 14:06.86. Later that year, he competed at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships, claiming an 11th place finish in the junior event. The 2007 season witnessed signi-ficant improvement as he bagged the 5000m Eu-ropean U23 title in Debrecen thanks to a 13:53.15 performance.

His progress stalled however in the following year as he only managed 64th place in the European cross country championships (under-23 cate-gory) held in Brussels in 2008 but Smaïl bounced back last year to win that title in commanding fashion in Dublin. In addition, he led the French

squad to the team gold. In doing so he showed his versatility by adding cross country honours to his previous track success.

Earlier in 2009, Smaïl could not successfully de-fend his 5000m European under-23 title in Kaunas but he still made it to the podium with a silver me-dal to his name.

Barcelona’s fifth place in the classy men’s 5000m should represent a stepping stone in what has been a more than promising career of Smaïl, one of the youngest European distance runners among the elite. Not surprisingly, as he was born in Algeria, Smaïl shares the name of Noureddine with one of the best middle-distance athletes in history, Noureddine Morceli, a former world re-cord holder in the 1500m.

Daniele Meucci (ITA) 3000m

Born: 7.10.1985 Height: 178 cm Weight:63kg Club: C.S. ESERCITO


WorldChampionships: 5000m:14h1/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 10000m:3/201010/2006;5000m:6/2010WorldHalfMarathonChampionships: 18/2009SPAREuropeanCrossCountryChampionships: 12/2008,9/2009

After finishing in a promising 10th place in Göte-borg 2006 at the age of 20, Meucci bagged the first 10000m medal for Italy in the last one and a half decades at the European Athletics Championships in Barcelona.

After the glory days that Italy enjoyed when Alber-to Cova, Stefano Mei, Francesco Panetta and Sal-vatore Antibo were ruling the roost in the 80s and early 90s, Meucci has emerged as Italy’s best bet in middle distance running.

The battle for the podium in Barcelona was thrilling. Spain’s Ayad Lamdassem seemed to be guaran-teed the second place but the battle for the “bron-ze” between Britain’s Chris Thompson and Meucci intensified while the Spaniard was gradually losing steam. The British and Italian duo not only caught up with Lamdassem but overtook him going neck

to neck right down to the tape. Both crossed the finish line at the same time, 28:27.33, but the Briton pocketed the silver medal on a photo-finish.

Four days after his 10000m bronze medal the 24-year-old Italian tackled the 5000m final where he finished a respectable sixth in what was his third race in barely five days in Barcelona.

Meucci has made steady progress throughout his career. He made it to the top 10 at last year’s SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Dublin with a ninth spot under his belt, one year after fi-nishing 12th at the same event in Brussels. Italy’s rising star is able to shine on different surfaces: in addition to his track and cross country accolades, Meucci also holds a creditable 62:41 time for a half-marathon run in Rome this year.

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Personal Bests: 3000m:7:50.53(09),5000m:13:26.09(09),10,000m:28:08.4(08),HM:62:41(10)Season’s Bests:13:35.02Barcelona29/07/10

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Bouabdellah (‘Bob’) Tahri (FRA) 5000m

Born: 20.12.78 Height: 191 cm Weight: 68 kg Club: Athlétisme Metz Metropole


OlympicGames: 3000msteeple:5/2008,7/2004,H/2000WorldChampionships: 3000msteeple:3/2009,5/2007,8/2005,4/2003, 5/2001,12/1999EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 3000msteeple:2/2010,3/2006,4/2002,10/1998EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 3000m:2/2009,2/2007,8/1998EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 3000msteeple:9/2003EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships: 5000m:1/1997

Bob Tahri, born in Metz to Algerian parents, disco-vered his enthusiasm for athletics at the age of 15 in 1993 when he went to watch the 1993 World Cham-pionships in Stuttgart, which were being held only 200km away from his home town which is situated close to the French-German border.

He quickly showed his talent at a variety of events on the track, and also cross country, breaking French age-group records and winning national titles.

In the international arena, he won the 5000m gold medal at the 1997 European Athletics Junior Cham-pionships but has since concentrated on running the 3000m steeplechase at the major outdoor championships.

He equalled the then European record of 8:06.91 in 2003 but he acknowledges that until recently he had not always done himself justice on the global stage when medals were at stake.

“I have sometimes had the impression that I was perceived as a choaker but perseverance and hard work has paid off. My coaches have always taught me to be patience. One has to believe in oneself and to hang on. The proof is that I had to wait for my sixth World Championships to get a me-dal,” Tahri told www.iaaf.org last year.

At the 2009 World Championships, at the age of 30, he took the 3000m steeplechase bronze medal in another European record of 8:01.18.

In addition to three European records over the barriers, Tahri set a European indoor 5000m record (13:11.13) earlier this year as well as twice setting European best performances in the non-cham-pionship 2000m steeplechase.

He is also the third fastest European ever over 3000m indoors, without the barriers, after having run a national record of 7:33.73 in Stockholm earlier this year.

Personal Bests: 3000m:7:33.18(2009);3000msteeplechase:8:01.18AR(2009)Season’s Bests:5000m:13:11.13iARMetz14.02.10;3000msteeple:8:03.72Metz29.06.10

Serhiy Lebid (UKR) 5000m

Born: 15.7.1975 Height: 179 cm Weight:63kg Club:Donetsk,D


EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 5000m:5/2010EuropeanAthleticsU23championships: 5000m:1/2007,2/2009SPAREuropeanCrossCountryChampionships: 1/98,01,02,03,04,05,07,08;3/97&09EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 3000m:9h1/2009

Personal Bests: 3000m:7:35.06(02),5000m:13:10.78(02),10000m:28:09.71(06)Season’s Best: 13:23.66Heusden10.07.10

By amassing no less than eight European cross country titles over the past decade Ukrainian dis-tance runner Serhiy Lebid has established himself as Europe’s most dominant and consistent figure during the winter months.

The tall, blonde 35-year-old remains the only male athlete to have competed in all 16 SPAR European Cross Country Championships. Making his senior debut while still in the junior ranks, Lebid finished a lowly 79th in the 1994 edition, before im-proving to 11th the following year. Injury curtailed his hopes in 1996, as he limped home in 58th, but a bronze medal marked his breakthrough year of 1997, eight years after he started serious training.Eager to add to his medal collection, Lebid cap-tured his first European cross country title in Fer-rara, Italy, 1998, at age 23. Since then, the cham-pionship crown has eluded him only four times and he enjoyed an impressive five consecutive title wins between 2001 and 2005; after a below-

par 11th place in 2006 Lebid came back for more glory in 2007 and 2008.

The latter event proved to be his toughest contest yet, as he battled Great Britain’s 2006 cham-pion, Mo Farah, until blasting away on a downhill stretch with some 500m to go. He names this la-test championship win – together with his bronze medal display as a 22-year-old – as his most spe-cial achievements to date.

Lebid’s distance pedigree as a track athlete however pales in comparison to his exploits on the cross country circuit. Nevertheless he did fi-nish seventh at the 2000 Olympic Games in Syd-ney in the 5000m, and won the 2001 World Uni-versity Games 5000m title and collected a 2002 European 5000m bronze medal. The Ukrainian star could not match that feat in Barcelona this year and he had to settle for the fourth place.

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Born:30.11.87 Height: 165 cm Weight: 60 kg Club: Sport Kulubu Fenerbahce


OlympicGames:10000m: 10000m:11/2008EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 5000m:9/2010WorldYouthChampionships: 3000m:3/2003EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 10000m:1/2009,5000m:9/2009

Born in Ethiopia, Mert Girmalegese first came to the attention of athletics fans when he won the 3000m bronze medal at the 2003 World Youth Cham-pionships under the name of Shimelis Girma. In a fascinating race, he finished behind future world stars Augustine Choge, from Kenya, and his then compatriot Tariku Bekele.

In the highly competitive cauldron of long distance running in Ethiopia, Girma made some progress as a junior but further opportunities to race interna-tionally didn’t come his way so, like several other good Ethiopian runners, he transferred to Turkey.He became eligible to compete for Turkey in Fe-bruary 2008 and he changed his name to Selim Bayrak.

In Beijing, he finished as the leading European run-

ner in the10000m, setting a national record which still stands in only his second recorded race over the distance. In April 2008, he also set a national record of 27:45.75 on not only his debut over 25 laps of the track but also his debut in a Turkish vest when won the European Cup 10000m on home soil in Is-tanbul.

After winning the 2009 European Athletics U23 Championships 10000m title in Kaunas, Lithuania, he was unfortunately injured and unable to com-pete in the World Championships.

Earlier this year, he reverted back to an Amharic name, calling himself Mert Girmalegese and told the Turkish media that this was done to safeguard his claim to family possessions – primarily property – in Ethiopia.

Personal Bests: 5000m:13:26.14NR(2008);10000m:27:29.33NR(2008)Season’s Best: 13:34.73Heusden10.7.10

Mert Girmalegese (TUR) 5000m

Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad (FRA) 3000m steeple

Born:15.03.85 Height: 190 cm Weight: 75 kg Club: Efs Reims A


OlympicGames: 3000msteeple:2/2008EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 3000msteeple:1/2010

Personal Best: 3000msteeple:8:06.98(2009)Season’s Best: 3000msteeple:8:07.87Barcelona1.8.10

In Barcelona, Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad set a championship record of 8:07.87, a time that beat Kenyan Matthew Birir’s winning clocking when the Olympics were held on this track in 1992.

“It was difficult to win ... since my number one rival was Bouabdellah (Tahri) who is the best in the world,” said Mekhissi.

“It was a tight race. I won it only in the last few me-tres. Bob beat me in the French championships and tonight it felt like my just revenge. We respect each other a lot. I watched him often on TV as a young boy. I was a little sad for him. I am deli-ghted to have beaten the championship record but my number one objective today was to win the race.”

Right from the gun the two Frenchmen shot into the lead and simply ran away from the rest. With

each lap the gap increased, both men looking easy up front. Their rivals seemed to decide early on that they were running for bronze. After one lap the two Frenchmen held a five-metre advan-tage. After two laps the gap had grown alarmin-gly and as the leaders passed the first kilometre in 2:41.19 it was clear that Francesco Pannetta’s 1990 championship record of 8:12.66 was in grave danger.

It was at the final hurdle that Mekhissi forged ahead to strike gold.

It was in 2007 when he clocked 8:14.22 in Heusden that Mekhissi broke through into the world’s elite. That same year in Debrecen he took the Euro-pean under-23 title with ease. In 2008 he added the European team title in Annecy, but the fol-lowing year he suffered injury at the Berlin World Championships and was forced to withdraw.

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Born:03.06.75 Height: 175 cm Weight: 65 kg Club: C.A.La Sansi


OlympicGames: 3000msteeple:H/2008.WorldChampionships: 3000msteeple:H/2009,H/2007,14/2005EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 3000msteeple:3/2010,2/2006

José-Luis Blanco is renowned in Spain for his per-sistence, having 13 attempts at becoming natio-nal champion (after four silvers and three bronzes) until he finally succeeded this year at the Olympic stadium where he was later to lift bronze in at the European championships. His biggest internatio-nal achievement came four years ago when he claimed European silver in Göteborg.

This time round, he and the rest of the field resigned themselves to fighting for bronze when the French duo of Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad and Bouab-dallah Tahri set off at a punishing pace that no one else could follow.

Blanco finally prevailed in his duel with Ion Luchia-nov of Moldova for the bronze: “I was calcula-ting my realistic chances during the race as I was conscious that the two French were too strong and out of my reach,” said Blanco.

“It’s a great success for the Spanish team and a personal one as I was silver medallist four years ago. It is fantastic to do it here in front of my family and friends in Barcelona’s Olympic stadium.”

Blanco is also an avid cross country runner and is among the three Spaniards who have made most appearances at the World Cross Country Cham-pionships - nine. His best performance came in Du-blin 2002 when he helped Spain to team bronze. His club, La Sansi, was founded by himself and he is both president and the leading athlete. He uses part of his earnings to fund five promising young athletes with grants from his own pocket.

Blanco achieved fame in March this year when he chased three thieves who had stolen two bags from a supermarket in Lloret and retrieved the sto-len goods.

Personal Bests: 3000msteeple:8:12.86(2006)Season’s Best: 8:19.15 Barcelona 1.8.10

José-Luis Blanco (ESP) 3000m steeple

Ion Luchianov (MDA) 3000m steeple

Born::31.01.81 Height: 178 cm Weight: 67 kg Club: USM


OlympicGames: 3000msteeple:12/2008,H/2004WorldChampionships: 3000msteeple:4/2009,H/2005EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 3000msteeple:4/2010,H/2006WorldIndoorChampionships: 3000msteeple:H/2010WorldJuniorChampionships: 3000msteeple:11/2000

Personal Bests: 3000msteeple:8:18.97(2008),1500m:3:43.94(2010)Season’s Best: 8:19.64 Barcelona 1.8.10

Ion Luchianov has a habit of surprising people. He created a stir when he qualified for the Olympic fi-nal in Beijing, breaking in the process the 24-year-old Moldovan record and leaving it at a respec-table 8:18.97, almost five seconds better than the previous mark. In Barcelona he created a similar reaction when he led the charge to chase down the two Frenchmen, Bouabdallah Tahri and Ma-diedine Mekhissi, who had stormed into what was to prove an unassailable lead. His fearless chase almost brought him his reward, had it not been for Catalan José Luis Blanco who was spurred on by the roars of the local crowd to grab bronze.

Even more surprising is that Luchianov should emerge from a country where there is a lack of a stadium with modern track and field facilities to train in. The problem became particularly acute

after the demolition of the Republican Stadium in Chisinau in the summer of 2006.

But Luchianov is grateful for training camps abroad where he can develop his talent. His initial desire was to attend a sports school, but when that became impossible because of injury he turned to athletics. A business studies student, he grabbed his final opportunity last year for a world student games title by lifting gold in Bel-grade at the age of 28. He was also the only Mol-dovan athlete to compete in the world indoors in Doha last winter.

Being the most high profile athlete in Moldovan athletics, he has won athlete of the year awards several years running under the tutelage of his coach Mikhail Kravtov.

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Born: 19.9.80 Height:183cm Weight: 77 kg Club: City of Manchester AC


OlympicGames: h/2004,qf/2008WorldChampionships: sf/2007,h/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 3/2006,1/2010EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 60mH:h/2005,4/2007,4/2009

It has been a long injury-riddled road to the top for Andy Turner who produced the performance of his life to land the European title in Barcelona in July.

As a child Turner had aspirations to be a footballer and played for two seasons as a schoolboy at Notts County before giving up the sport to concentrate on athletics. A talented 200m sprinter and long jum-per he opted to concentrate on the 110m hurdles as his speciality. In 2003 he made a big advance, lowering his personal best to 13.66 and earning a Great Britain call-up, finishing fifth in the European Cup. He qualified for the 2004 Olympics, but strug-gling with injury – which has blighted much of his career – and failed to progress beyond the heats in Athens. In 2006 he set a personal best of 13.38 (he also ran a windy 13.24) and enjoyed a successful year on the championship stage, winning bronze medals at both the Commonwealth Games and

European championships.

Turner ran a lifetime best of 13.27 in the heats of the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, but finished third in his semi-final and failed to advance. Injuries continued to haunt the Briton and after exiting at the quarter-final stage of the Beijing Olympics he was removed from full funding by his national fe-deration.

Keen to prove them wrong he finished fourth at the 2009 European Athletics Indoor Championships and this season has been his most consistent season to date. In Barcelona he was the man to hold his nerve and make the fewest mistakes in the final, striking gold in 13.28.

He has two daughters, Jazmin, aged five and Car-men, three.

Personal Best: 13.27Osaka2007Season’s Best: 13.28Barcelona2010

Andy Turner (GBR) 110m hurdles

Garfield Darien (FRA) 110m hurdles

Born: : 22.12.87 Height: 187 cm Weight: 76 kg Club: Coquelicot 42


WorldChampionships: 110hurdles:sf/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 110hurdles:2/2010WorldIndoorChampionships: 60hurdles:sf/2010EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 60hurdles:6/2009WorldJuniorChampionships: 110hurdles:7/2004EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships: 110hurdles:2/2005

Personal Bests: 13.34Barcelona30.7.10Season’s Bests: 13.34Barcelona30.7.10

Sprint hurdler Garfield Darien was one of a host of athletes to impress at the European Athletics Championships earlier this summer for a resur-gent French squad.

The Lyon-born athlete was a promising junior and he made his international debut at the 2004 World Junior Championships in Grosseto finishing seventh. The following season, though, he matu-red to win the gold medal at the 2005 European Athletics Junior Championships in Kaunas.

It has taken Darien a while to adjust to life in the senior ranks. In 2008 he ran a personal of 13.50 at the French championships, but it was only the following year that he started to gain more inter-national experience.

He finished sixth in the European indoor 60m hur-

dles final in Torino behind his more illustrious com-patriot Ladji Doucoure, and reached the 110m hurdles semi-finals of the World Championships in Berlin. He also ran a personal best of 13.36 in Monaco to further announce his rising status. Still aged only 22 he finished runner-up in the 60m hur-dles at the French indoor championships in Paris, but his consistent form outdoors has been even more impressive. Having enjoyed a low-key build up to the European championships exclusively in France – except for one appearance in the prin-cipality of Monaco – he has performed around the 13.4 mark.

Darien acquitted himself with distinction in Bar-celona, clocking a lifetime best of 13.34 to take the silver medal behind Great Britain’s Andy Tur-ner in the final.

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Born: 11.04.86 Height:183cm Weight: 75 kg Club:Swansea/UWIC


WorldChampionships: 400mhurdles:7/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 400mhurdles:1/2010,H/2006

In Barcelona David Greene destroyed the field with a European leading time and personal best of 48.12. “I felt pressurised being the favourite tonight but the pressure helped me focus and go faster,” said Greene.

“I did not have any particular objective today other than to win the gold medal.” In the final, Greene was in a class of his own, hurdling impeccably and once in the home straight, going away from his ri-vals in a high-class performance.

As a teenager he was a keen footballer but swit-ched to athletics at which he had shown much promise, winning the Welsh U13 75m hurdles title. He considers his old coach Darrell Maynard to be the biggest influence on his career because he had helped him to enjoy training and racing.

Outside of athletics he played for Swansea City FC

youth until he was 16 and used to work in McDo-nalds and clothing store chain Next and has a de-gree in sport and leisure management from UWIC.

The talented Welshman has a good championships record, winning medals at the European U23 cham-pionships and European junior championships. 2009 was to be his breakthrough year with subs-tantial improvements, and after an early season best of 48.68 in Prague he recorded a world-class career best in his semi-final with 48.23 at the World Championships in Berlin and went on to finish se-venth in the final.

He also won at the inaugural SPAR European Team Championships in Leiria, Portugal. Coming down from his Barcelona high, Greene finished a respec-table third against world class opposition in the London stage of the Diamond League.

Personal Best: 400m hurdles 48.12 (2010)Season’s Best: 48.12Barcelona31.7.10

David Greene (GBR) 400m hurdles

Heni Kechi (FRA) 400m hurdles

Born::31.8.80 Height: 179 cm Weight:63kg Club: Entente Sud Lyonnais


WorldChampionships: 400mhurdles:dnq/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 400mhurdles:4/2010,h/2006

Personal Bests: 400mhurdles:49.34(2010)Season’s Bests: 400mhurdles:49.34Barcelona31.7.10

Heni Kechi was born in the Tunisian city of Djerba and, competing for his native country despite li-ving in France since his mid-teens, he won a bron-ze medal in the 400m hurdles at the 2002 African Championships. He obtained French citizenship in 2004.

He has often said that his motivation for starting in athletics was watching Stephane Diagana win the 400m hurdles gold medal for France at the 1997 World Championships. As a teenager, al-though athletics was his favourite sport he was a good standard football and basketball player. Nowadays, he is a martial arts fanatic and if he had not been involved in athletics, he might have had a career as a professional fighter.

Kechi broke 50 seconds for his main event for the

first time in 2006 but, when he started compe-ting, his main dream was of one day becoming a French athletics champion and he finally achie-ved the feat in 2009.

At the 2010 European Athletics Championships, Kechi moved into new territory and showed his appetite for the big occasion when, running in the less-than-favourable lane seven, he finished fourth in a new personal best of 49.34.

Despite just missing out on a medal, Kechi was not disappointed. “You might think that I’d be un-happy about not getting a medal but the truth is far from it. Before arriving in Barcelona, I was ranked seventh in Europe, I finished fourth with a new personal best, and I consider both things to be a bonus.”

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Born: 29.06.84 Height: 188 cm Weight: 80 kg Club: Russian Army


EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: HJ:1/2010EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: HJ:4/2009EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: HJ:12/2005WorldUniversityGames: HJ:1/2007

Aleksander Shustov won gold for Russia in Barcelo-na to follow Yaroslav Rybakov in 2002 and Andrey Silnov in 2006 as the European men’s high jump champion.

In a competition affected by vertical rain and boo-ming thunder, Shustov jumped 2.33m, matching the PB he set at the Russian team championships earlier in the year, while Ivan Ukhov, a man who dis-likes competing in the wet, ensured Russia finished one and two for the first time after clearing 2.31.

“At the beginning it was not going well because of the rain, but I found the courage to jump higher,” said Shustov, who credited his coach with the vital tactical move that ensured victory.

“When Ukhov cleared 2.31m, I was thinking of skip-ping my third attempt but the coach insisted not to do it,” he said. “It was the right decision. And finally I won the gold.”

He had inspiration of a slightly different kind for his other big win of 2010, at the SPAR European Team Championship in Bergen. Three days earlier, on 16 June, his wife, the international sprinter Yekaterina Kondratyeva, gave birth to their first son, Sergey.

Russian champion this year, Shustov’s Barcelona gold was his first at a senior championship, althou-gh he did win the World University Games title in 2007 and just missed a medal at the European in-doors last year.

Personal Best: HJ2.33(2010)Season’s Best: 2.33Sochi28.5.10

Aleksander Shustov (RUS) High Jump

Martyn Bernard (GBR) High Jump

Born: 15.12.84 Height: 195 cm Weight: 86 kg Club:WakefieldHarriers


OlympicGames: HJ:9/2008WorldChampionships: HJ:14/2007EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: HJ:dnq/2006,3/2010EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: HJ:3/2007,dnq/2009CommonwealthGames: HJ:2/2006WorldJuniorChampionships: HJ:10/2002EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: HJ:11/2005EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships: HJ:11/2005,12/2003

Personal Best: 2.30(2008)Season’s Bests: 2.29 Barcelona 29.7.10

Martyn Bernard overcame a heel injury to grab bronze for Britain in Barcelona, just as he had at the European indoors three years ago.

The 25-year-old had danced around with an um-brella during the rain-affected warm-up as “Sin-ging in the Rain” sailed out from the PA system. He’d failed to qualify for the final in Göteborg four years ago, but was dancing again later as he claimed third with 2.29m, his best performance of the year, to win a medal on count back over Sweden’s Linus Thornblad.

“I had to have an injection in my heel which limi-ted me a little,” said Bernard who’d gone into the lead when he cleared 2.23 on his third attempt and skipped 2.26.

The medal was a welcome return to the podium for Bernard, a silver medallist at the Commonwealth Games in 2006 and a finalist at the Osaka worlds and Beijing Olympics. The Yorkshireman missed the World Championships last summer, a season hampered by an ankle injury.

Born in Wakefield, Bernard started his athletics life as a middle distance runner before finding his sporting vocation as a high jumper. He studied psychology at Liverpool’s John Moores University from three years from 2004, and won a bronze at the World University Games in 2005.

Formerly coached by Mike Holmes, he now trains at Lee Valley in north east London under the UK Performance centre director Dan Pfaff.

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Born: 18.09.86 Height: 176 cm Weight: 69 kg Club: Cognac AC


WorldChampionships: PV:3/2009WorldIndoorchampionships: PV:dnq/2010,dnq/2008EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: PV:1/2010EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: PV:1/2009EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: PV:10/2007

Renaud Lavillenie suffered his first defeat of the year when he failed to clear a height at the Lon-don Grand Prix, one of the shocks of a stormy night of Diamond League athletics. Until then the Fren-chman had hardly put a foot wrong during the 2010 outdoor season and his victory in Barcelona was one of the most predictable of the European championships.

At 5.94, the Frenchman’s world and European lead was 14cm higher than anyone else in the field, so all he had to do was avoid mistakes as the bar mo-ved towards a height none of his opponents could match. And that’s what he did, leaping clear first time at 5.85.

Not that it was a perfect competition for the 23-year-old, who had failures at 5.60 and 5.75 be-fore he found his rhythm. “I was testing myself at the beginning,” he said later. But a good second time clearance at 5.75 was the decisive moment. “I knew then I was on the right track to gold,” he said.

Tenth at the European under 23s back in 2007, La-villenie made his big breakthrough last year when he improved from 5.65 to a 6.01 national record, joi-ning the elite over-six metres club at the SPAR Euro-pean Team Championships. He’d already won the European indoors earlier in the year and went on to take bronze at the worlds in Berlin behind Steve Hooker.

But 2010 hasn’t all been plain sailing for he suffered huge disappointment at the world indoors in Doha when he failed to make the final. “I think in some ways that helped to make me stronger mentally,” he said later.

He attacked the outdoor season with gusto, win-ning nine out of nine before Barcelona and vaul-ting a world lead to win the French championships. With London’s sodden spectacle his only blemish, Lavillenie will be relishing the chance to beat the Australian Hooker in the Continental Cup. After all, he says, “The sky is my limit.”

Personal Best: 6.01 NR (2009)Season’s Best: 5.94 Valence 10.7.10

Renaud Lavillenie (FRA) Pole Vault

Maksym Mazuryk (UKR) Pole Vault

Born:02.04.83 Height: 190 cm Weight: 85 kg Club: Sport Kulubu Fenerbahce


OlympicGames: PV:dnq/2008WorldChampionships: PV:4/2009,11/2007WorldIndoorChampionships: PV:dnq/2010,6/2008,dnq/2006EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: PV:2/2010,8/2006EuropeanAthleticsUnder23Championships: PV:6/2005,3/2003WorldJuniorChampionships: PV:1/2002

Personal Best: PV: 5.82m (2008)Season’s Best: PV:5.80mBarcelona31.7.10

Maksym Mazuryk jumped 10cm above his season’s best to win a surprise silver in Barcelona, a welcome change for the Ukrainian who finished fourth in the World Championships last year.

Mazuryk admitted that he suffered from nerves throughout the final, yet he found his best form of the year when it mattered most as medal favouri-tes such as Germany’s Ralph Holzdeppe and the Pole Lukasz Michalski fell away.

The Ukrainian’s medal-clinching vault was 5.80, just 2cm below his lifetime best.

“I was really close to doing it and with it maybe I could have reached the gold,” said Mazuryk,

who followed the great Sergey Bubka as a Euro-pean medallist. “Anyway, I am really happy with the silver medal and cannot believe it yet.”

It’s not surprising, as this was Mazuryk’s first ma-jor medal in senior competition – in any cham-pionships, indeed, since he won bronze at the 2003 European under 23s.

A world junior champion in 2002, the Ukrainian was ranked outside Europe’s top seven before Barcelona as one of eight men who had a top clearance of 5.70. What’s more he’d failed to make the final at the world indoors, just as he had in Beijing two years ago.

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Born: 24.10.84 Height: 195 cm Weight: 85 kg Club:ABCLudwigshafen


WorldChampionships: LJ:9/2007WorldIndoorChampionships: LJ:5/2010EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: LJ:1/2010EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: LJ:dnq/2007

After two rounds of the long jump final in Barce-lona, European leader Christian Reif was staring at elimination. Lying tenth with 7.87 Reif needed to find something special just to stay alive.

Boy did he find it. Reif exploded into life in round three with a monster jump of 8.47, eclipsing Robert Emmiyan’s 24-year-old championship record and putting the German equal with Andrew Howe at sixth on the European all-time list.

It was 6cm further than Emmiyan’s 1986 record, 20cm longer than Reif’s personal best, and further than anyone else in the world this year.

“That was my golden jump,” said Reif, who became the first German long jump champion since Lutz Dombrowski took gold for East Germany in 1982 and the first German man to win at Barcelona 2010.

Reif’s winning leap was just 7cm short of Dombrows-ki’s 30-year-old German record.

Reif was fifth at the world championships in Berlin last summer but he’s improved by 28cm this year and arrived at the championships as the favourite. After equalling his PB with 8.27 in qualifying it was no surprise that he won but the way he did it in the final session was one of the performances of the championships.

“As I am one of Europe’s best jumpers my aim was to gain a medal,” he said. “After confirming my abi-lity in the qualification, I knew that I could do well in the final. Then I had two poor jumps at the begin-ning and I had to pull it back in the third.”

A resident of Saarbruecken, Reif studies sports, health and fitness management.

Personal Best: LJ 8.47 (2010) Season’s Best: 8.47 Barcelona 1.8.10

Christian Reif (GER) Long Jump

Kafetien Gomis (FRA) Long Jump

Born:23.03.80 Height: 185 cm Weight: 68kg Club: Asptt Lille Metropole


OlympicGames: LJ:dnq/2004WorldChampionships: LJ:dnq/2009WorldIndoorChampionships: LJ:dnq/2010EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: LJ:2nd/2010,LJ:5th/2006EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: LJ:4th/2009,LJ:4th/2007WorldUniversityGames: LJ:9th/2003,LJ:7th/2005

Personal Best: 8.24 LJ (2010)Season’s Best: 8.24m Barcelona 1.8.10

So often in the shadow of the French record hol-der Salim Sdiri, Kafetien Gomis jumped into the sunshine with an unexpected last round leap to take silver in Barcelona and push his team-mate out of the medals.

Gomis has twice finished fourth at the European indoors but had never before won a major cham-pionship medal. And there seemed little prospect that he woud in Barcelona until the sixth round.

He opened with 8.00 but followed that with four fouls. No one would have been surprised if he’d failed to get another score on the board, never mind challenge for a medal. But the 30-year-old

leapt from seventh to silver by 1cm with a jump 3cm longer than his 2004 PB and 13cm further than he’d jumped this year.

“It feels surreal,” said Gomis, who pushed Britain’s Chris Tomlinson into third. “I risked a lot and in the end it paid off. I did not jump well until the very last attempt. It was unexpected but this is great.”

Indeed, Gomis is more used to going out at the qualification stage, as he did in the 2004 Olympics and again at last summers world championships, as well as at the world indoors in Doha, although he was fifth at the 2006 European championships in Goteborg.

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Born:30.12.78 Height: 192 cm Weight: 89 kg Club: Belgrave Harriers


OlympicGames: TJ:2/2008,Q/2004,6/2000WorldChampionships: TJ:1/2009,6/2007,9/2001EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: TJ:1/2010,5/2006,5/2002WorldIndoorChampionships: TJ:1/2008

You can lose as much as you like as long as you win the big ones, might well be Phillips Idowu’s motto. He went to the Barcelona European championships with a season’s best of a solid but not spectacular 17.48, but left not only with the gold medal round his neck but a personal best by 8cm, leaving his new mark at an impressive 17.81.

“It feels great to have jumped a personal best,” said Idowu. “My build-up to the championships was not great but I am very happy to be able to jump consistently today. Now I am just missing one title – the Olympics.”

In the European final, the outcome seemed hardly to be in doubt as Idowu was jumping with the élan that he had not showed all season and when he hit the sand for his winning jump it was clear there was

no one to threaten him.

Idowu was a talented sportsman at school in both basketball and American football. In 2000, he set a lifetime best to qualify for the Olympic final with 17.12m, and was only four centimetres short of that mark in the final, as he finished a promising sixth and made the world final the following year.

That performance set the tone for what was to prove an erratic career until 2008 when a new de-termination took hold and, free of the injury that had wrecked his chances in Osaka 2007, he first took world indoor gold before going on to Beijing to win silver.

In 2009 there was to be no stopping him as he finally lifted gold at the World Championships in Berlin.

Personal Best: TJ: 17.81 (2010) Season’s Best: 17.81 Barcelona 29.7.10

Phillips Idowu (GBR) Triple Jump

Marian Oprea (ROU) Triple Jump

Born: 06.06.82 Height: 190 cm Weight: 77 kg Club: Rapid Bucuresti


OlympicGames: TJ:5/2008,2/2004WorldChampionships: TJ:3/2005,Q/2003,Q/2001EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: TJ:2/2010,3/2006,Q/2002WorldCup: TJ:3/2006WorldIndoorChampionships: TJ:4/2006WorldJuniorChampionships: TJ:1/2000

Personal Best: TJ: 17.81m (2005) Season’s Best: TJ: 17.51m Barcelona 29.7.10

Marian Oprea, who missed last year recuperating from an operation on his left knee in late 2008, made a surprise return to big-time competition, winning silver at this summer’s European cham-pionships. What a reward for sheer persistence!

Olympic silver in 2004, world bronze in 2005, Eu-ropean bronze in 2006 and now silver. Oprea has earned every single medal and the respect to go with it.

“The competition was a little bit stressful because of the weather conditions,” he said. “I didn’t find my rhythm until the fifth attempt when I did my best jump. I am quite happy with the silver medal as I came to the competition after an operation and a year off injured and didn’t have great ex-pectations. I am happy but I hope to get the gold in the next championship.”

It was after the Beijing Olympics that Oprea rea-lised he had to do something about the trouble-some knee problem he was suffering from: “I was having continual problems with tendonitis, or jumper’s knee,” he explained.

“There was no alternative in the end, I had to muster up courage and go under the knife. I went to Turku, in Finland, to have the surgery.”

While he was away, European triple jumping has moved on with Nelson Évora, Phillips Idowu and Teddy Tamgho taking centre stage, but the Ro-manian is not too concerned: “I am still only 27,” he says, “and despite the injury to my left knee, many triple jumpers continue to win medals at championships well into their 30s. Look at Jona-than Edwards.”

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Born:30.08.1981 Height: 204 cm Weight:136kg Club:AZS-AWFWarszawa


OlympicGames: SP:1/2008WorldChampionships: SP:2/2009WorldIndoorChampionships: SP:3/2008EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: SP:2/2010EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: SP:1/2009

Standing at 204 cm tall and weighing in at around 140 kg there are few more commanding figures in the world of the shot put than the hirsute Pole.

A modest junior performer Majewski has found pa-tience to be a virtue in a career that has only star-ted to flourish over the past few seasons.

He finished fourth at the 2003 European Athletics U23 Championships and the following year again placed fourth, this time at the World Indoor Cham-pionships. He failed to qualify for the final at the Athens Olympic Games.

In 2005 he snared the World Student Games title and his steady improvement continued with a sixth place finish at the following year’s European cham-pionships.

He made his major breakthrough in 2008. He star-ted the year winning a bronze at the World Indoor

Championships before causing a major surprise in Beijing to become the first Pole for 36 years to land the men’s shot put title at the Olympic Games with a throw of 21.51m.

He started 2009 in fine style winning the European indoor title in Torino and set a mighty personal best of 21.95m in Stockholm. Yet he had to settle for the silver medal at the World Championships behind American Christian Cantwell in Berlin.

He was a slightly disappointing fifth at the World In-door Championships in Doha, but bounced back to claim the silver medal at the European Athletics Championships in Barcelona – an agonising 0.01 shy of the gold medallist Andrei Mikhnevich of Be-larus.

Majewski has many interests outside of athletics. He is currently learning Spanish and he has a passion for reading science fiction books.

Personal Best: SP: 21.95 NR (2009) Season’s Best: SP: 21.28m Zurich 18.08.2010

Tomasz Majewski (POL) Shot Put

Andrei Mikhnevich (BLR) Shot Put

Born: 12.7.76 Height: 202 cm Weight: 127 kg Club: Mogilyov


OlympicGames: SP:9/2000,5/2004,3/2008WorldChampionships: SP:Q/1999,Q/2001,1/2003,6/2005,3/2007,7/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: SP:Q/1998,2/2006,1/2010WorldIndoorChampionships: SP:8/1999,6/2004,2/2006,4/2008,2/2010EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: SP:Q/1996,Q/1998,Q/2000,5/2007

Personal Best: 22.09 NR Minsk 14.7.10 Season’s Best: 22.09 NR Minsk 14.7.10

At the age of 34 Andrei Mikhnevich is showing the best form of his long and medal laden career.

Born in the city of Babruysk in central Belarus, Mikhnevich made his international championship debut at the 1998 Europeans in Budapest, failing to qualify. His career showed signs of improve-ment, however, when finishing ninth at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.

He made a huge advance into world-class in 2003, setting a massive new lifetime best of 21.66m before improving upon that by 0.03 to land gold at the World Championships in Paris. He struggled to back up that performance during the next two seasons and had to settle for a disappointing fifth at the Athens Olympic Games and sixth at the 2005 World Championships.

He enjoyed a resurgence of form the following season, however. Posting his longest throw for

three years with a best of 21.60m and winning a silver medal at both the European championships and the World Indoor Championships.

Since then he has proved a consistent accumu-lator of championship medals with bronzes at the 2007 World Championships and Beijing Olym-pics.

This season, though, he has shown his very best form, registering a new lifetime best indoors of 21.81m followed by a silver medal at the world in-doors in Doha.

In July, Mikhnevich set a new national record of 22.09m in Minsk before landing the gold medal at the European Athletics Championships in Bar-celona – his first major title in seven years. He is married to Natallia Mikhnevich, the Olympic wo-men’s shot put silver medallist.

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Born:07.06.83 Height: 192 cm Weight: 122 kg Club:SlaskWroclaw


OlympicGames: DT:2/2008WorldChampionships: DT:2/2009,12/2007EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: DT:1/2010,6/2006WorldJuniorChampionships: DT:6/2002EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships: DT:5/2001EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: DT:9/2003,2/2005

After silver medals in Beijing and Berlin, Piotr Ma-lachowski finally struck gold in Barcelona when he produced a championships record to take the European title after a thrilling tussle with world champion Robert Harting that left the world leader and Olympic champion Gerd Kanter adrift of the medals.

After Harting snatched Berlin gold from his grasp in the last round a year ago, this victory was extra sweet for the 27-year-old from Biezun. “Finally I won gold at a big championship,” he said. “I’m satisfied after I lost to Harting last year in Germany.”

Malachowski was less consistent than the big Ger-man but his second round effort of 68.87 was enou-gh to win by 20cm and he became Poland’s first European men’s discus champion since Edmund

Piatkowski in Stockholm 1958.

Malachowski must have been sick of silvers for he was also second at the European under 23s in 2005, while he finished sixth in Göteborg four years ago. He performed poorly at the Osaka worlds in 2007, where he was affected by the heat, but bounced back to finish behind Kanter in Beijing.

A Lance Corporal in the Slask Wroclaw Military Club, Malachowski kept his discipline throughout the Barcelona final despite not reaching the dis-tances he’d thrown earlier in the season. He war-med up for championships with a Polish record of 69.83 at the British Grand Prix in Gateshead and lay second only to Kanter in the world and European lists.

Personal Best: 69.83DTNR(2010)Season’s Best: 69.83Gateshead10.7.10

Piotr Malachowski (POL) Discus

Robert Harting (GER) Discus

Born: 18.10.84 Height: 201 cm Weight: 126 kg Club: SCC Berlin


OlympicGames: DT:4/2008WorldChampionships: DT:1/2009,DT:2/2007EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: DT:2/2010,dnq/2006WorldJuniorChampionships: DT:dnq/2002EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: DT:1/2005

Personal Best: DT69.43(2009Season’s Best: 68.69Shanghai23.5.10

When Robert Harting whipped his discus out across the infield of Berlin’s Olympiastadion to take a dramatic world title in his hometown it was one of the moments of the championships. And it was immediately followed by another as Harting tore across the track, ripped his vest from his torso and tossed the ever-present Berlino mascot over his shoulder like a child’s toy.

But the giant German was denied the chance to repeat his exuberant celebration with Barcelo-na’s Barni this summer by Piotr Malachowski who got revenge for last year’s defeat in Berlin by ta-king the European title.

But Harting can count himself desperately unluc-ky to come away only with silver after producing a wonderful series with three throws beyond 68m and three beyond 66m. It will be no consolation

but his best effort of 68.47 was the longest ever for second at a European championships. Yet, after such a thrilling victory in his home city last sum-mer, Harting found second place hard to take.

“Technically it was a very bad day for me,” he said. “I’m not satisfied at all. Usually I would have thrown farther. Anyway, that’s the way it goes. I beat him last year, he got me this time.”

It was an unusually sanguine reaction from a man who describes himself as typical Berliner – outs-poken, risque, and with a killer instinct in compe-tition. He comes from a throwing family – his pa-rents Gerd Seidler and Bettina Harting were shot putters in the GDR era, and his younger brother Christoph is also a discus man – and his coach was infamously part of the East German athletics regime.

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Born: 11.09.77 Height: 191 cm Weight: 117 kg Club: ASK Slavia Trnava


OlympicGames: HT:8/2008,7/2004,dnq/2000WorldChampionships: HT:10/2009,3/2007,9/2005,dnq/2003EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: HT:1/2010,dnq/2006,7/2002WorldJuniorChampionships: HT:dnq/2002EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: HT:5/1999WorldUniversityGames: HT:10/2001,8/1999

Libor Charfreitag made history in Barcelona by win-ning Slovakia’s first ever European championships title in a men’s hammer final that he dominated from the second round.

Charfreitag’s winning throw of 80.02m was the 2007 world bronze medallist’s first gold in a long career and brought his nation its first ever European cham-pionship medal in either men’s or women’s events. After finishing seventh in Munich eight years ago and 14th in Göteborg, the 32-year-old was deligh-ted to finally have his hands on the top prize.“To win the gold is a reward for many years of hard work,” he said.

A throws coach based at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, the Slovak has been in great form all season. Charfreitag started gently with 75.50 before opening up in the second to take the lead by nearly a metre, a throw further than anyo-ne else in the field has managed all year.

It’s been a long wait for such a reward. Apart from that bronze in Osaka, his previous best in a cham-pionship final was fifth in the 1999 European under 23s.But his hammer career started long before.

He comes from an athletics family – his mother, Eva, used to compete at discus and shot and his father, also called Libor and one of his coaches, was a dis-cus and hammer thrower. His younger sister, Evan, is another hammer specialist, while Radka, who died from illness, was a shot finalist in the 1993 European juniors and still ranks fifth in Slovakia all-time.

“Since early childhood, I have been going to the athletics stadium with my father and, step by step, I started to train for athletics,” said Charfreitag who left Trnava for USA in 1997 and won two college tit-les in 1998 and 2000. He has been Slovak hammer champion 12 times and Slovak athlete of the year three times.

Personal Best: HT:81.81NR(2003)Season’s Best: 80.59 Walnut CA 17.4.10

Libor Charfreitag (SVK) Hammer

Nicola Vizzoni (ITA) Hammer

Born:04.01.73 Height:193cm Weight: 126 kg Club: GA Fiamme Gialle


OlympicGames: HT:dnq/2008,10/2004,2/2000WorldChampionships: HT:9/2009,dnq/2007,dnq/2005,dnq/2003,4/2001, 7/1999EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: HT:2/2010,9/2006,dnq/2002,dnq/1998WorldUniversityGames: HT:1/2001,5/1999,5/1997MediterraneanGames: HT:1/2009,4/2005,2/2001,5/1997

Personal Best: 80.50 HT (2001)Season’s Best: 79.12 Barcelona 28.7.10

Ten years is a long time to wait for your second taste of success. But that just made it all the swee-ter for Nicola Vizzoni when he stole silver in Bar-celona by just 6cm from Krisztian Pars in a dra-matic last round in which the Italian veteran first lost bronze then threw 79.12 to leap from fourth to second.

“Ten years ago I won silver in Sydney,” he said. “Now I have another. I am like a good wine; the older, the better.”

If Vizzoni’s Olympic silver was a shock back in 2000, this was another as he was only ranked ninth in Europe before the championships and has a habit of not making it through the qualifying rounds at major championships. The closest he’d come to a medal was fourth at the world cham-pionships in Edmonton in 2001, the same year he won the World University Games.

He was ninth at the Göteborg Europeans four years ago and ninth in Berlin at last summer’s worlds, but there was little in his form this year to suggest the 11-time Italian champion would make the podium in Barcelona.

In the final Vizzoni’s third round effort put him in third but Valeri Sviatokha shook up the order with his last attempt. The Russian leapt from sixth to third with 78.20, pushing Vizzoni out of the bronze medal position.

But the left-handed Vizzoni had other ideas. The 37-year-old Italian wasn’t going to let this oppor-tunity slip by and summoned all his experience to respond with 79.12, not only shoving Sviatokha back to fourth but snatching the silver medal from Pars.

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Born: 01.04.82 Height: 188 cm Weight: 90 kg Club: Kristiansands IF


OlympicGames: JT:1/2008,1/2004WorldChampionships: JT:1/2009,2/2007,2/2005,11/2003,dnq/2001EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: JT:1/2010,1/2006,7/2002WorldJuniorChampionships: JT:2/2000

Since he picked up gold in the Athens Olympics, Andreas Thorkildsen has won a medal at each of the major championships, totalling seven in six years, a phenomenal record. After Athens came silver in the 2005 worlds, gold in the Göteborg Euro-peans, another silver in Osaka before successfully defending the Olympic title in Beijing. In Berlin he became the first javelin thrower in history to hold Olympic, world and European crowns simulta-neously and this summer he repeated his European gold.

His winning throw of 88.37m was his second longest throw of the season, but the competition with the shock silver medallist, Matthias de Zordo of Germa-ny, was close. How did he rate his performance? “It’s difficult to say,” said Thorkildsen. “But it was incredible fun to swap the lead twice like we did today.”

The Norwegian had lost to De Zordo in the SPAR

European Team Championships in Bergen, where the German surprised him with a long first throw. But on that occasion, Thorkildsen was suffering from a groin injury.

In Barcelona he soon realised he had a fight on his hands when De Zordo repeated the tactic by throwing a personal best in round one: “Oh, I thou-ght this was going to be hard. It was a lot more exci-ting in the competition than in any of the Diamond League meetings,” said Thorkildsen.

Thorkildsen took up javelin throwing at the age of 11, coached by his father who himself threw 71.64 in 1974. His mother was 100m hurdles Norwegian champion in 1972. At the age of 13 the teenager threw his first Norwegian age-group record, recor-ding 51.88 with the 600gm spear. Once Thorkild-sen’s father realised he could take him no further as a young javelin thrower, Åsmund Martinsen was asked to step in.

Personal Best: 91.59 2006 Season’s Best: 90.57 Florø 29.5.10

Andreas Thorkildsen (NOR) Javelin

Matthias de Zordo (GER) Javelin

Born: 21.02.88 Height: 188 cm Weight: 90 kg Club: SV schlau.com Saar 05 Saarbrücken


EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: JT:2/2010

Personal Best: JT: 87.81 (2010)Season’s Best: 87.81Barcelona31.7.10

Germany’s revelation of the European cham-pionships, Matthias De Zordo had already bea-ten Andreas Thorkildsen once this year at the SPAR European Team Championships in Bergen. Using the same tactic of a long early throw, the left hander, who had come to Barcelona with a personal best of 84.38, was to break that mark three times, leaving his new career best at 87.81, more than three metres further than ever before.

Unfortunately for De Zordo, he came up against a Thorkildsen who was once more at the top of his game and had to settle for silver.

“I never dreamt I would perform like that,” said De Zordo. “It was not that easy to deal with the wind. Anyway, I thought, run like hell and let the thing

fly. I hoped to impress Andreas with my first throw, as I did in Bergen, but he responded very well so I knew today I had to take him into account.”

For his part, Thorkildsen acknowledged the trou-ble the German had caused him. “It was a really tough and exciting competition,” admitted the Norwegian. “The rivals are very strong which is crucial if you want to achieve top results. I’m glad that I responded well to De Zordo.”

Of Italian stock, De Zordo lives in Saarbrücken near the border with France and is coached by the former world bronze medallist, Boris Henry. Only three Germans have thrown further than De Zordo, including his coach who in his day threw 90.44.

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Tinmar’s name doesn’t appear in any athletics meeting reports when he was a teenager because he was more in-volved with football, playing as a striker with the junior teams of US Le Pecq, a lower league team based on the outs-kirts of Paris.

“I was playing football until I was 19 and people said I was really fast because I ran through opposition defences. I said to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to run under 10 seconds’ and then I started to learn a little about sprinting. Now I’m not so far from the 10 seconds barrier,” joked Tinmar, who also pays tribute to the encouragement and support that fellow French international athlete Martial Mbandjock has given him.

Teddy Tinmar (FRA)

Born: 30.3.87Height: 171 cmWeight: 54 kg

Club: AC Vélizy-Villacoublay

Personal Best: 100m: 10.46 Season’s Best: 100m: 10.46 Regensburg 5.6.10

The third leg runner in France’s triumphant 4x100m team at the European championships has be-come a reliable member of their relay squad. Aged 22 Pessonneux shares the same club – AS Aix-les-Bains - as his more illustrious team-mate, Christophe Lemaitre, the Eu-ropean 100m and 200m champion. A 200m specialist, he ran a personal best of 20.89 last year, which he has matched this season. He finished fourth in the 200m at the 2009 Me-diterranean Games and he was a finalist at the European U23 cham-pionships. He also snared silver medals in the 4x100m at both those competitions for France to further underline his relay dependability.

Pierre-Alexis Pessonneaux (FRA)


Club: As Aix-les-bains

Personal Bests: 10.40 (2009) 10.62 Aix-les-Bains 1.5.10Season’s Best: 10.62 Aix-les-Bains 1.5.10

Mbandjock enjoyed a sensational European championships in Barce-lona by taking no fewer than three medals, two bronzes at both the 100m and 200m events plus a gold medal as part of the French 4x100m relay team. Although his achieve-ments were somewhat oversha-dowed by his compatriot Christo-phe Lemaitre, who won all the three races, the 24-year-old’s breakthrou-gh was impressive as his best inter-national result so far dated back to 2007 when he claimed the 100m bronze medal at the European U23 championships in Debrecen.

Martial Mbandjock(FRA)

Born: 14.10.1985 Height: 187 cmWeight: 84 kg

Club: Asptt Lille Metropole

Personal Bests:100m:10.06(2008), 200m:20.38(2010)Season’s Best: 10.08 Valence 9.7.10

Christophe Lemaitre made history at the European championships this year by becoming the first man ever to win the golden treble of 100m, 200m and the 4x100m relay. Discovered late, at the age of 15 in 2005, his talent began to flourish in 2008 when he clocked 10.26 in the French championships. That same year he took his first titles when he did the double at the world juniors in Poland.

Christophe Lemaitre (FRA)

Born: 11.06.90 Height: 189 cmWeight: 74kg

Club: As Aix-les-bains

Personal Bests:100m:9.98NR(2010), 200m:20.16(=NR)(2010)Season's Bests: 100m:9.98Valence9.7.10, 200m: 20.16 Valence 10.7.10

4x100m

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4x400m

Michael Bingham won a European silver by less than the thickness of his vest in Barcelona. Bingham crossed the line in the same time as his team-mate Martyn Rooney but was given the brighter coloured medal on a photo finish. Running blind from lane eight, Bingham looked on for a narrow victory until Borlee made his late charge.

“I panicked. It definitely should have been a different colour,” he lamented afterwards.

The individual bronze medallist, Rooney ran a superb anchor to ove-rhaul Jonathan Borlee and bring Britain the relay silver in Barcelona. He was third in the individual final despite running in lane one, tricky for such a tall man. A European and world junior medallist, the south Londoner helped Britain to world ju-nior relay bronze in 2006 and World Championships silver last year when he was recovering from an ankle in-jury, before taking European silver in 2010. He has raced in senior cham-pionship relay finals every year from 2005.

Kevin Borlée may forever be known as the wrong brother. Everyone ex-pected it to be Jonathan Borlée who claimed Belgium’s first ever Eu-ropean 400m title, but brother Kevin stole the show with a dramatic vic-tory in one of the closest finals ever.

It was Jonathan – the older twin by five minutes - who’d set three natio-nal records this year, including one in the semi-finals, but Kevin held his form to come from fifth with 50m left to win in 45.08. “Tonight it was not easy but I handled the race at the end,” said Kevin who was the first Belgian man to become European champion since 1971.

Kevin Borlée (BEL)


Club: Florida State University,WS

Personal Bests: 44.88 (2008)Season’s Best: 45.08

Martyn Rooney (GBR)


Club: Croydon Harriers


Michael Bingham (GBR)

Born: 13.04.86Height: 186 cmWeight: 79kg

Club: Wake Forest


Another member of France’s golden 4x100m relay squad at the European Athletics Championships, Hallay competed in the heats before he was replaced by Christophe Lemai-tre, the 100m and 200m gold medal-list, in the final. The 26-year-old sprin-ter has been a solid performer with a best of 10.39 set at the French cham-pionships, where he finished fourth in Valence. The 26-year-old member of the Metz Metropole club is also a 21.32 200m runner at his best. He is the national indoor champion for 200m.

Imaad Hallay (FRA)


Club: Athletisme Metz Metropole

Personal Best: 10.39(2010)Season’s Best: 10.39Valence9.7.10

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Vladimir Krasnov ran a brilliant last leg to fetch Russia an unexpected relay gold in Barcelona. The 19-year-old proved he had a wise head on his shoulders as he reserved his strength down the back straight before pul-ling away in the finishing stretch ahead of Britain’s Martyn Rooney. A former world youth bronze me-dallist, he was unlucky to miss out on an individual medal in Barcelona by just 0.01s, the smallest margin ever. He broke Russia’s under 23 record at the Russian Cup in June and has reduced his PB this year by 1.23s. He won his first Russian title in July.

Vladimir Krasnov (RUS)

Born: 19.08.90 Height: —Weight: —

Club: Education Ministry


The multi-talented Dudaš has been brought in as a reserve for a variety of events. In addition to his sprinting ability, he has also competed inter-nationally as a long jumper.

He lead the 2009 European Athle-tics U23 Championships decathlon after six events but is relatively weak in the throwing events, a deficiency he is working hard to correct, and fi-nished the competition in the Lithua-nian city of Kaunas with the bronze medal. He lives in Novi Sad.

He failed to finish the decathlon at this year’s European Athletics Cham-pionships. “I injured my foot during the pole vault and couldn’t compe-te in the remaining two events. It was very frustrating as I was on course to go over 8000 and get a personal

Mihail Dudaš (SRB)

Born: 15.11.89Height: 179 cmWeight: 83kg

Club: AC Crvena Zvezda

Personal Best: Decathlon: 7966 (2010)Season's Best: Decathlon 7966 Gotzis 30.5.2010

Reserve4x400m

best,” said Dudaš, who has now set a target of being a medalist at the next European Athletics Championships in Helsinki in two years time.

Verena Sailer (GER) 100m

Born: 16.10.85 Height: 166 cm Weight: 57 kg Club:Mannheim,Germany

Personal Bests: 100m:11.10(2010),200m:24.01(2006)Season’s Best: 100m: 11.10. Barcelona 29.7.10

At the European championships in Barcelona this year, Verena Sailer carried off her biggest prize to date, snatching gold in a personal best 11.10. “Wow, I’m European champion,” said an ecstatic Sailer. “I can’t believe it. The race was amazing.” It was indeed and it looked for one moment as though Véronique Mang would steal gold from the German. But with her distinctive hustle, the Manheimerin fought to the line.

It was three years ago in Debrecen, Hungary, that she laid the foundation for an international senior career when she took the under-23 European crown. In the winter of 2009, she celebrated an excellent bronze in the 60m at the European in-door championships in Torino in 7.22 (7.17PB semi-final).

That bronze represented her first senior medal in a

major championships and was a springboard for greater things later that summer. On the final day of the Berlin World Championships, Sailer ancho-red the German quartet to a resounding bronze in front of 60,000 spectators for her second major medal in six months.

A personal best in 2009 of 11.18 promised good things for 2010 and a wind-aided 11.11 win in Wat-tenscheid suggested that maybe the world’s elite might have to start worrying. But then came injury and 2010 has been a tentative voyage of recove-ry. It was not that the qualifying time for Barcelo-na of 11.35 was a problem. She overcame that on a handful of occasions before the trip to Bergen where she could manage no better than seventh in the SPAR European Team Championships in a disappointing 11.39. But then came Barcelona and the biggest triumph of Sailer’s career.

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OlympicGames: 4x100m:5/2008WorldChampionships: 4x100m:3/2009,100m:sf/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 100m:1/2010,sf/2006WorldIndoorChampionships: 100m:sf/2008WorldJuniorChampionships: 100m:5/2004

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Born:3.3.88 Height: 164 cm Weight: 56 kg Club: IL BUL

Ezinne Okparaebo was born in Imo, Nigeria, but moved with her parents to Norway when she was nine and grew up in Ammerund, on the outskirts of the Nowegian capital Oslo.

She become interested in athletics at school in her mid-teens and immediately discovered her prowess as a sprinter. Having won her first Norwe-gian junior title in 2005, she made a little bit of Norwegian athletics history when she became the first athlete from her country to win a gold medal at the European Athletics Junior Championships when she took the 100m crown in 2007.

Ironically, although she is now well known for her good starts, she got out of her blocks badly in Hen-

gelo and had to work hard to get in front by the halfway point.

She moved to a specialist training centre in Oslo just before her triumph in 2007, a few months after finishing school, and she is still based there.

Further confirmation of her talent came at the 2009 European Athletics Indoor Championships, when she won the 60m silver medal just a few days after her 21st birthday.

Okparaebo has said in several interviews that her role model is the Jamaican sprinter Kerron Stewart, the 2008 Olympic games and 2009 World Cham-pionships 100m silver medalist.

Personal Bests: 100m11.23NR(60mindoors7.21NR,2009)Season’s Best: 100m11.23NRBarcelona29.7.10


OlympicGames: 100m:dnq/2008WorldChampionships: 100m:dnq/2009WorldIndoorChampionships: 60m:6-sf/2008EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 100m:4/2010EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 60m:2/2009EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 100m:4/2009EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships: 100m:1/2007

Ezinne Okparaebo (NOR) 100m

Yelizaveta Bryzhina (UKR) 200m

Born: 28.11.89 Luhansk Height: — Weight: — Club: Lugano D

Personal Best: 22.44 (2010)Season’s Best: 22.44NUR/Barcelona31.7.10

Yelizaveta Bryzhina ran a PB to snatch a silver medal in a remarkable women’s 200m final in Barcelona in which the Frenchwoman Myriam Soumaré provided the shock of the European championships by winning gold.

Bryzhina, just 20, was thought to be the main threat to the Russian favourite Aleksandra Fedori-va, especially after posting an impressive 22.86 in the semi-finals. She did, indeed, have the measu-re of Fedoriva, as she slipped past the Russian in the final quarter of the race.

But she hadn’t bargained for Soumaré (who had?) and had to be satisfied with a PB and Ukrainian under 23 record of 22.44. “I’m happy with the re-sult, the silver medal is fine,” she said. “Of course, I would have liked the gold but the result is good. That’s what counts.”

She had an even better result two days later as she anchored the Ukrainian 4x100m team to a brilliant, and unexpected, relay victory, again

pushing the Russians off the top of the podium. Bryzhina powered past the French legend Chris-tien Arron to cross the line in a massive national record 42.29.

Bryzhina’s Barcelona honours added to the consi-derable family medal collection for both her pa-rents were Olympic champions – her mother, Olga Vladykina, was the 1988 400m champion, and her father, Viktor Bryzhin, won relay gold for the Soviet Union, also in 1988. What’s more, her mother claimed an Olympic silver over 200m in the Barcelona stadium in 1992.

A European junior silver medallist in 2007, Bryzhina began to be talked of as a potential medallist when she won the SPAR European Team Cham-pionships in June while slicing more than two-tenths off her PB to 22.71. That put her third in the European rankings but even though she hacked another chunk off in the final it wasn’t enough to beat the remarkable Soumaré.

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EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 200m:H/2010,4x100m:1/2010WorldJuniorChampionships: 100m&200m:H/2008EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 60m:H/2009EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships: 200m&4x100m:2/2007

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Born: 24.06.88 Height: 176 cm Weight: 60 kg Club:LuchMoscow,Dinamo

It was Aleksandra Fedoriva’s face that told the story at the end of the women’s 200m final in Bar-celona. The Russian, favourite for the title, was left gasping in disbelief at the winner Myriam Soumaré of France.

Fedoriva had lowered her PB to win the national title and looked most likely of the three Russian fi-nalists to take gold. But she had to settle for bronze as Soumare shocked across the line and Yelizaveta Bryzhina dipped for silver.

“I put everything I had on the track,” said Fedoriva. “Soumaré clocked 22.32, that’s too fast.”

Fedoriva – a student of advertising at Moscow Uni-

versity of Humanities – had good reason to hope for better. Like Bryzhina she has ex-sprinters for parents with close connections to the Barcelona stadium. Her father, Andrey Fedoriv was four-times Soviet 200m champion and competed at the 1992 Olympics, while her mother, Lyudmila Belova, was a 400m runner.

Fedoriva’s first love is actually the hurdles – she was European junior champion at 100m hurdles in 2007 and fourth at the world juniors in 2006. But she’s always had good flat speed – she ran a vital se-cond leg for the Russian team that won the Olym-pic sprint relay in 2008, and has made big improve-ments over 200m in the last two seasons taking the European under 23 title last year.

Personal Best: 22.41 (2010)Season’s Best: 22.41 Saransk 15.7.10


OlympicGames: 200m:sf/2008:4x100m:1/2008WorldIndoorChampionships: 60mhurdles:sf/2010EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 200m:3/2010WorldJuniorChampionships: 100mhurdles:4/2006WorldYouthChampionships: 100mhurdles:4/2005EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships: 100mhurdles:1/2007EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 200m:1/2009WorldUniversityGames: 100mhurdles:sf/2007

Aleksandra Fedoriva (RUS) 200m

Tatyana Firova (RUS) 400m, 4x400m

Born: 10.10.82 Height: 174 cm Weight: 59 kg Club:DynamoMoscow

Personal Best: 49.89 (2010)Season’s Best: 49.89Barcelona30.7.10

Tatyana Firova made history in Barcelona’s Olym-pic stadium as she led a Russian sweep of the me-dals in the women’s 400m for the first time ever at a European Athletics Championships.

Firova looked good for gold after the semi-finals but she had to fight hard to beat her team-mates, Kseniya Ustalova and Antonina Krivopshapka, in the home straight as the trio crossed the line in a blanket finish leaving the rest of Europe in their wake.

It wasn’t easy to separate the medallists and Firo-va needed the performance of her life and a des-perate dip for the line to claim the title. She was given the verdict in 49.89, a personal best and the first sub-50s time by a European this year.

“It´s great that we all made it on the podium be-cause during the season we have shown the top results,” she said.

She certainly had, setting a PB indoors to take silver at the worlds in Doha where she also pic-ked up another silver in the relay. She’s also set PBs over 200m both indoors and out this year, and anchored the powerful Russian 4x400 squad to European gold.

A former world university and European junior champion, she also has an Olympic relay silver from 2008. At the recent London Grand Prix she was a close second to Allyson Felix having won over 400m at the Diamond League event in Stoc-kholm a week earlier.

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OlympicGames: 400m:6th/2008:4x400m:2nd/2008WorldChampionships: 4x400m:2nd/2009,4x400m:H/2005EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 400m&4x400m:1/2010,4x400m:H/2006EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships: 400m:2nd/2001EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 400m:2/2003WorldUniversityGames: 400m:1/2003WorldIndoorChampionships: 400m&4x400m:2/2010

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Born:12.07.83 Height: 175 cm Weight: 65 kg Club: CUS Cagliari

It may have been a medal sweep for the Russians, but it was Italy’s Libania Grenot who got out quic-kest from the gun in the women’s 400m final in Bar-celona. Shooting from the blocks in lane six with the Russians arrayed inside her, the Cuban-born athlete led them into the back straight.

The Russians were too strong for her in the second half of the race, but the 27-year-old held her own to finish fourth and win a place on Europe’s Conti-nental Cup team.

A former medallist at the Central American cham-pionships, Libania Grenot Martinez Scafteti (to use her full name) switched allegiance to Italy after marrying an Italian man and moving to Casal-palocco, near Rome, in 2006. She got Italian citi-

zenship in 2008, and became eligible to compete for her new country on 18 March 2008.

Since then she’s broken the Italian 400m record both indoors and out, and lowered her PB for 200m to 22.93. She represented Italy at the Olympics in Beijing where she finished fifth in her semi-final in 50.83, a national record and well over half a se-cond inside her previous PB. She lowered it to 50.30 when winning the Mediterranean Games title last year and came close to her best with 50.43 in the Barcelona final.

In fact, Libania Grenot can count herself unlucky, for she left Barcelona with two fourth places after Italy just missed a medal in the 4x400m relay setting yet another national record, 3:25.71.

Personal Bests: 50.30400mNR(2009)Season’s Best: 50.43Barcelona30.7.10


OlympicGames: 400m:sf/2008WorldChampionships: 400m&4x400m:H/2009,400m:sf/2005EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 400m&4x400m:4/2010Pan-AmericanGames: 400m:4th/2003CentralAmericanChampionships: 400m&4x400m:3/2005MediterraneanGames: 400m:1/2009

Libania Grenot (ITA) 400m, 4x400m

Mariya Savinova (RUS) 800m

Born:13.8.85Height: — Weight: — Club: Chelyabinsk

Personal Best: 1:57.56(3.7.10)Season’s Best: 1:57.56Eugene,USA,3.7.10

The 24-year-old Mariya Savinova from Chelya-binsk just east of the Ural Mountains is developing an enviable championship reputation to add to Russia’s rich tradition in the two-lap event.

Savinova, the European outdoor and world and European indoor champion, has won three of the last four major championships she has contested with her only real disappointment coming at last year’s outdoor World Championships in Berlin.

Yet success has been a relatively recent pheno-menon for Savinova who was a far from stellar ju-nior. The first signs that the Russian could become a hit on the international stage came in 2007 when she improved her lifetime best by more than five seconds with a 2:00.78 clocking in her home city. She made her championship debut at the 2008 world indoors in Valencia, but gave no real indication of what was to come as she exited the heats in Spain.

It was in 2009, though, when Savinova announced herself as a truly world-class athlete. She was crowned national indoor champion in Moscow and then blitzed the field to storm to the Euro-pean indoor title in Torino in a new lifetime best of 1:58.10.

Outdoors she ran an even quicker 1:57.90, but was a slightly disappointing fifth at the World Cham-pionships in Berlin when perhaps a little more was expected of the Russian.

This season, though, has been near perfect. She opened the year by winning the world indoor title in Doha before crushing the field at the Eu-ropean championships with her trademark burst of speed.

She has also set a personal best of 1:57.56 to win at the Diamond League meeting in Eugene to fur-ther underline her outstanding credentials.

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WorldChampionships: 800:5/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 800:1/2010WorldIndoorChampionships: 800:1:2010,H/2008EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 800:1/2009

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Born: 17.4.81 Height: 152 cm Weight: 47 kg Club:Wigan&District

One of the most diminutive athletes on the circuit Jenny Meadows is finally realising her rich potential to develop into one of the most consistent 800m athletes in the world.

Born in Wigan in the North West of England, she started out as a 400m sprinter and claimed a gold medal as a member of Great Britain’s triumphant 4x400m team at the 2000 World Junior Cham-pionships in Chile.

In 2003, the 1.52m-tall Meadows finished 7th in the 400m at the European Athletics U23 Championships and also competed for Great Britain as a member of the 4x400m squad at the World Championships in Paris.

After struggling to make her international breakthrough in the 400m and failing to make the Olympic team for the Athens Olympics she made a more concerted bid to step up to the 800m in 2005 and slashed more than three seconds from her life-

time best to record 2:02.05.

The steady improvement continued in 2007 when she recorded her first sub-2:00 time and reached the 800m semi-finals at the World Championships in Osaka as well as finishing fifth at the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham. She failed to ad-vance beyond the semi-finals at the Beijing Olym-pics, but made a major breakthrough in 2009.

She recorded a swift 1:58.63 in Monaco on the eve of the World Championships in Berlin and then produced the run of her life in the German capi-tal. Meadows produced a tactically astute perfor-mance to time her medal bid to perfection and clinch bronze in a new personal best in 1:57.93.

This season she has lived up to her rising profile by winning world indoor 800m silver in Doha before landing a European bronze in Barcelona, despite an injury plagued build up. She is married to her coach, Trevor Painter.

Personal Best: 1:57.93(2009)Season’s Best: 1:58.89 Rome 10.6.10


OlympicGames: 800:sf/2008WorldChampionships: 800:sf/2007,3/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 800:3/2010WorldIndoorChampionships: 400:sf/2003,sf/2006,5/2008,2/2010EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 800:h/2002,5/2007,4/2009WorldJuniorChampionships: 400:sf/2000EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 400:h/2001,7/2003

Jennifer Meadows (GBR) 800m

Hind Dehiba (FRA) 1500m

Born:17.3.79Height: 162 cm Weight:43kg Club: Ca Montreuil

Personal Best: 3:59.76NR16.7.10Season’s Best: 3:59.76NR16.7.10

The French athlete is in the form of her life after landing European 1500m silver and setting a per-sonal best this season. Hind Dehiba, now aged 31, only really started to make her presence felt on the international stage in 2004. That year she made staggering progress, hacking almost four seconds from her personal best in the 800m (2:01.37) and more than 17 seconds from her previous best in the metric mile with 4:03.72. She also made her senior international debut at the Athens Olympics that year, but failed to progress beyond the heats.

The French athlete continued to make real pro-gress in 2005, winning European indoor 1500m bronze and later that year ducking below 2:00 for the 800m and setting a national 1500m record of 4:00.49 in Rieti. For the second successive major outdoor cham-

pionships, though, she disappointed as she failed to advance beyond the 1500m heats at the worlds in Helsinki. Dehiba finished ninth at the 2006 Euro-pean championships and then was banned from competition for two years from 2007 to 2009 for a doping offence.

On her return, after a slow start to the summer she then ran a stunning national record of 3:59.76 to finish third in Paris and backed this up by claiming a silver medal in Barcelona – the biggest achie-vement of her career to date. Even Dehiba see-med a little shocked by her accomplishments and added: “A silver medal was more than I really expected.”

Dehiba also showed her versatility by running 1:59.99 for the 800m in Monaco in July.

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OlympicGames: 1500:h/2004WorldChampionships: 1500:h/2005,sf/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 1500:9/2006,2/2010WorldIndoorChampionships: 1500:4/2006EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 1500:3/2005

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Lisa Dobriskey (GBR) 1500m

Born:23.12.83Height: 171 cm Weight: 56 kg Club:AshfordAC/LSAC

Personal Best: 3:59.50(2009)Season’s Best: 3:59.79Paris16.7.10

Born with a left leg turned in and made to wear shoes on the wrong feet by her mother as a young child to correct the problem, few would have predicted Lisa Dobriskey would have developed into a world-class athlete.

Following the great British middle-distance tradi-tion, Dobriskey will be hoping for a good showing in Split but her main target remains the London 2012 Olympics, where she will hope to be at her best.

A gifted schoolgirl athlete, she made her inter-national debut at the 2002 World Junior Cham-pionships in Jamaica, finishing fourth in the 1500m final. The following year she won a 1500m bronze at the European U23 championships to claim her first international medal.

Her big breakthrough in the senior ranks came at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne

when she landed a shock gold medal to an-nounce herself as a major talent.

Injuries have restricted her development but she gave notice of her world-class ability in 2008 when recording her quickest ever time of 4:00.64 in a mixed race, and, with very little competiti-ve action behind her, finished fourth in the 2008 Olympic final.

Dobriskey emerged a stronger athlete in 2009 and landed the silver medal at the World Cham-pionships in Berlin, just 0.01 behind the gold medal winner Maryam Jamal of Bahrain. After an injury restricted build up to the 2010 European cham-pionships, she finished fourth in Barcelona. Dobriskey is married to 800m international Ricky Soos, who appeared for Great Britain at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Her sister, Sarah, competed for England in the hammer throw.


OlympicGames: 1500m:4/2008WorldChampionships: 1500m:sf/2007,2/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 1500m:h/2006,4/2010WorldIndoorChampionships: 3000m:10/2008EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 3000m:5/2007WorldJuniorChampionships: 1500m:4/2002EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 1500m:3/2003

Born: 20.8.85 Height: 168 cm Weight: 50 kg Club: Üsküdar Belediyesi Spor Kulübü

Turkey’s status as a rising power in women’s endu-rance running has been cemented by the drama-tic emergence of Aslı Çakir this season.The 24-year-old was virtually unheard of until this summer, but a fifth place finish in the 1500m final at the European Athletics Championships in Barce-lona in a personal best of 4:02.17 suggests she is set for a very bright future.

A useful junior Cakir finished sixth in the junior race at the 2002 SPAR European Cross Country Cham-pionships. It was not, though, until six years later when she started to show real promise, recording a national record of 9:43.34 in the 3000m steeple-chase at the European Cup 1st League in Istanbul. She qualified for the Turkish team at the 2008 Beijing Olympics but failed to progress beyond the heats,

finishing a lowly 14th.

Last season she lowered her lifetime best to 9:36.01 but again disappointed on the major cham-pionship stage exiting the heats at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. She did, however, show the first signs of 1500m potential by clocking a PB of 4:08.07 in Patra.

She has improved markedly this campaign, setting a hand-timed 4:04.8 at the Turkish championships in Izmir before further lowering her personal best in the Catalan capital. The Turkish athlete also pos-ted an 800m personal best at her national cham-pionships with 2:03.09. The IAAF Continental Cup will be another big test of her ability as she compe-tes sparingly on the international stage.

Personal Best: 1500m: 4:02.17 (2010)Season’s Best: 1500m: 4:02.17 (2010)


OlympicGames: 3000steeple:h/2008WorldChampionships: 3000steeple:h/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 1500:5/2010WorldJuniorChampionships: 63000S2004

Asli Çakir (TUR) 1500m

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60

Born: 17.10.85 Height: 168 cm Weight: 51 kg Club: Marathona Clube de Portugal

In Barcelona, Sara Moreira had the race of her life, lifting European bronze in the 5000m in a lifetime best 14:52.71. “I’m really happy,” she said. I’ve never been so nervous before a race but I got a medal and improved my personal best by four seconds. Anyway, the most important thing is the medal not my time and I could have got even the silver me-dal. But when you do the best race of your career you have to be very satisfied.”

Moreira made her debut over 10000m earlier this season at the European 10000m Cup in Marseille, fi-nishing third in 31:26.55 and helping the Portuguese team to a successful defence of team gold.

Moreira had a fine 2009 season, kicking off with sil-ver at the Torino European indoor championships in 8:48.18: “I still can’t believe I’ve done this,” she said in Torino.

“It is like a dream.” She followed that with team bronze at the World Cross Country Championships and later that summer collected double gold at the steeplechase and 5000m at the world student games championships representing Oporto poly-technic.

Then in the winter she formed part of the Portu-guese squad that lifted gold at the SPAR European Cross Country Championships before she travel-led to Canada to take the world university cross country title.

In the 2010 summer season Moreira followed on from where she left off in 2009, setting lifetime bests from 1500m to the 10000m, the highlight coming in Barcelona. Though only 24, Moreira has been run-ning for 16 years since she took her first steps in ath-letics in primary school at the age of eight.

Personal Bests: 3000m:8:42.69(2010),1500m:4:07.11(2010),5000m:14:52.71(2010)Season’s Best: 3000m:8:42.69Huelva9.6.10


OlympicGames: 3000msteeple:H/2008WorldChampionships: 5000m:10/2009,3000msteeple:6/200913/2007EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 5000m:3/2010WorldIndoorChampionships: 3000m:3/2010

Sara Moreira (POR) 3000m

Alemitu Bekele (TUR) 3000m

Born: 17.09.77 Height: 165 cm Weight: 48 kg Club: Üsküdar Belediyesi Spor Kulübü

Personal Best: 3000m:8:35.19(2010)Season’s Best: 3000m:8:35.19Lausanne8.7.10

Turkey’s Alemitu Bekele captured the European 5000m title in commanding fashion en route to a championships record of 14:52.20. In doing so the Ethiopian-born ace denied her more fancied compatriot Elvan Abeylegesse the 5000 & 10000 double.

The 32-year-old Alemitu added European gold to the European 3000m indoor title she collected in Torino last year. Holder of a pacey 4:02.2 1500m performance this season, that clocking sugges-ted she would be quite hard to beat in the clo-sing metres of the 5000m. “I am happy to have won European gold and to achieve the cham-pionships record 14:52:20. It is a great gift for Tur-key,” she said.

That 4:02.2 finishing speed, which represented a 4-second improvement over her previous best at the age of 32, should also stand her in good stead for the 3000m which is the distance she is running

here in Split.

Bekele transferred from Ethiopia to Turkey in 1999. Before that she ran in five World Cross Country Championships for the east African nation, col-lecting four team medals. This year she has been in excellent shape, following Meseret Defar home in the Stockholm indoor 5000m in a European re-cord time of 14:46.44, thereby erasing Romanian Gabriela Szabo’s previous record that has stood for almost 11 years.

Coached by Ertan Hatypoglu, compatriot Elvan Abeylegesse’s former coach, Bekele contracted a severe stomach virus last summer which even-tually led to her spending a month in an Istanbul hospital, with a drip in her arm for much of the time in a bid to clean out her system. Considering she only restarted training in December her reco-very has been nothing short of remarkable.

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OlympicGames: 5000m:7/2008WorldChampionships: 5000m:13/2009,1500:11/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 5000m:1/2010WorldIndoorChampionships: 3000m:5/2010,3000m:10ht/2008

Anna Alminova (RUS) 3000m

Born: 17.01.85 Height: 165 cm Weight: 50 kg Club:LuchMoscow

Personal Bests: 3000m:8:40.63(2009)/8:28.49i(2009)Season’s Best: 3000m:8:47.57iKarlsruhe31.01.10

Anna Alminova is renowned for running fast on the circuit but fails to live up to her favourite tag in the major championships. This season is a case in point. In Paris she destroyed a classy 1500m field to clock 3:57.65, over two seconds faster than anyone else in Europe in 2010. But in the Barcelo-na European championships, she could manage no higher than sixth after making the pace for much of the race. There have been exceptions to the rule, as when she romped away with the Eu-ropean indoor title in Torino 2009, but in the main she has disappointed outdoors.

At the world indoors in Doha earlier this year, after managing no better than seventh in the 1500m fi-nal, she tested positive for Pseudoephedrine that was contained in an over-the-counter cough re-medy and was handed a three-month ban.

That period of enforced rest meant that she could not start her summer season in May as she inten-ded, but had to delay it until late July. However, it does not seem to have affected her form as wi-tnessed by her time in the Paris Diamond League. Nor did the ban mean she was idle, quite the op-posite as she told the Russian press: “Hardly any-thing changed because of the ban. It just meant I had to extend my build-up by a month and start competing later rather than sooner.”

In 2009, she won the SPAR European Team Cham-pionships 1500m title and paced Tirunesh Dibaba to a 5000m world record in Oslo. She married Rus-sian pole vaulter, Viktor Chistiakov, in November 2008.

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OlympicGames: 1500m:11/2008WorldChampionships: 1500m:sf/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 1500m:6/2010WorldJuniorChampionships: 1500m:2/2004

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Born: 11.9.1982 Height: 159 cm Weight: 40 kg Club: Enka Spor Kulubu

Elvan Abeylegesse moved to Turkey from her na-tive Ethiopia in 1999 and she became the first world record holder for her adopted country in Bergen on June 2004 with a stunning 14:24.68 time for the 5000m.

Previously known as Hewan Abeye as an Ethiopian and then Elvan Can already as a Turkish national, Abeylegesse landed her first ever gold medal at a major event in Barcelona last month. For her it was a rich reward for a career of near misses. She won the 5000m and 10000m silver medals at the Beijing Olympic Games, a silver medal in the 10000m at the World Championships in 2007 and 5000m bron-ze at the 2006 European championships. But now she has gold at last – only Turkey’s second in Euro-pean championships history.

The women’s 10000 event has traditionally been

won courtesy of devastating front running perfor-mances and now Abeylegesse can add her name to a glittering roll of honour which includes Ingrid Kristiansen, Paula Radcliffe and Fernanda Ribeiro.In Barcelona, the damage was done between 4km and 5km when Abeylegesse put in a 3:01 kilometre, which spread the field. From this point on, victory was never in doubt, with a European lead time of 31.10.24 in 27 degrees heat, high humidity and a swirling wind speaking volumes for her talent.

Over the second half of the race, Abeylegesse was churning out laps of 73 and 74 seconds relentlessly and gradually opened a winning lead. The long-time leader spent a lot of time looking back on her rivals, yet she need not have worried as she was never likely to be caught. As she crossed the line she raised her head skyward and celebrated a well deserved win.

Personal Bests: 1500m:3:58.28(04),3000m:8:31.94(02),5000m:14:24.68(04),10000m:29:56.34(08)Season’s Best: 14:31.52Paris16.7.10


OlympicGames: 5000m:2/2008,12/2004;10000m:2/2008;1500m: 8/2004WorldChampionships: 10000m:2/2007;5000m:5/2003&2007EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 10000m:1/2010;5000m:2/2010,3/2006SPAREuropeanCrossCountryChampionships: 2/2003,3/2002

Elvan Abeylegesse (TUR) 5000m

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Born: 8.11.1981 Height: 165 cm Weight: 46 kg Club: Maratona Clube de Portugal

Portugal’s Jessica Augusto landed her first outdoors major medal at the Europeans in Barcelona whe-re she claimed bronze in the 10000m event four days before taking a creditable fourth place over 5000m. The 28-year-old should arguably be regar-ded as one of the most complete world distance runners having also successfully tackled the 3000m steeplechase event in which she set a national re-cord of 9:18.54 in early June in Huelva, only behind world champion Marta Domínguez.

Augusto has enjoyed a marvellous 2010 season as she also set a massive 5000m career best of 14:37.07 at the Diamond League meeting in Paris for fifth place and also lowered her PB over 10000m with a 31:19.15 performance to her name in Ostrava last May.

The Portuguese star has had a remarkable record as a cross country runner. She became the Euro-pean junior champion in 2000 and more recently she bagged the silver medal at the 2008 SPAR Euro-pean Cross Country Championships in Brussels and led the Portuguese squad to the women’s team gold, a feat the national squad also managed last year in Dublin, albeit with Augusto, hotly tipped as a medal contender, having to settle for fourth. She placed a fine 21st at this year’s world cross country championships in Bydgoszcz where Augusto was the first European athlete home. Her best performance at the world cross country stage came in 2007 when she finished 15th in the Kenyan city of Mombasa.

Personal Bests: 5000m:14:37.07(2010);10000m:31:19.15(2010);3000msteeple:9:18.54(2010)Season’s Best: 14:37.07Paris16.7.10


WorldChampionships: 5000m:15/2007;3000msteeplechase:11/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 10000m:3/2010;5000m:4/2010WorldIndoorChampionships: 3000m:8/2008WorldCrossCountryChampionships: 12/2007SPAREuropeanCrossCountryChampionships: 2/2008,4/2009

Jessica Augusto (POR) 5000m

Mariya Konovalova (RUS) 5000m

Born: 14.8.1974 Height: 179 cm Weight: 58 kg Club:SportClubMoscow

Personal Bests: 1500m:4:05.10(1998);3000m:8:30.18(1999);5000m:14:38.09(2008); 10000m:30:31:03(2009)Season’s Best: 14:49.68 Saransk 14.7.10

The 36-year-old Russian Mariya Konovalova has ex-celled on the cross country circuit having claimed the silver medal at the 2006 SPAR European Cross Country Championships in San Giorgio Su Legna-no. The previous year Konovalova was part of the Russian team which lifted the gold medal in Tilburg and finished tenth individually. In 2007 she narrowly missed the bronze medal to finish fourth in the Spa-nish city of Toro.

Konovalova (née Pantyukhova) became the first European-born finisher at the Beijing Olympics over 10000m with a fifth place to her name. Konovalova holds an outstanding 30:31.03 career best over the distance set in 2009 but could not place better than

11th at the Berlin World Championships.

At the recent European championships in Barce-lona Konovalova took charge of the 5000m race from the gun and only the Turkish pair of Elvan Abeylegesse and Alemitu Bekele plus the Portugue-se duo of Sara Moreira and Jessica Augusto could manage to match her pace. A fast 8:57.08 split for the opening 3km put her on course for a medal but eventually she had to settle for the fifth spot.

She is coached by her husband Yuriy Konovalov and made her marathon debut earlier this year with a 2:35:21 appearance in London.

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OlympicGames: 10000m:5/2008WorldChampionships: 5000m:6/1995&71999&112007;10000m: 11/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 5000m:5/2010SPAREuropeanCrossCountryChampionships: 2/2006,4/2007

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Born: 02.02.82 Height: 165 cm Weight: 60 kg Club:Hallamshire/SheffieldUniversity

Barcelona brought out the best in Dean. Roared on by a heavily pregnant Paula Radcliffe in the BBC commentary box, Dean sliced more than eight se-conds off her personal best and had it not been for a do-or-die surge from Russia’s Lyubov Kharmalova off the final barrier it would have been an amazing bronze for the Hallamshire harrier.

The pressure created by Dean forced the Russian to a season’s best and she only just held off the Bri-ton by a slender 0.35 to deny her bronze. Buoyed by British medal success and the roars from the crowd in the 1992 Olympic stadium, Dean came from way outside medal contention to fight for a medal that had seemed well beyond her. Her time was only one second outside the UK record held by Helen Clitheroe.

Like many British athletes, Dean combines cross country with track, and does it with some success. In 2009 she became national cross country cham-pion and finished third this year. On the track she sought out races in Germany and the Netherlands in her build up to Barcelona.

In the nation’s trials for Barcelona she finished se-cond to Barbara Parker but turned the tables in the Catalan capital when she gave her all in the final to set a lifetime best of 9:30.19.

In the 2007 World Championships she narrowly missed out on a place in the final finishing fifth in her heat. The following year her Olympic dream was shattered by a stress fracture after being selected for the Beijing squad.

Personal Best: 3000msteeple:9:30.19(2010)Season’s Best: 9:30.19Barcelona30.7.10


WorldChampionships: 3000msteeple:H/2007EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 3000msteeple:4/2010,H/2006

Hattie Dean (GBR) 3000m steeple

Yulia Zarudneva (RUS) 3000m steeple

Born: 26.04.1986 Height: 185 cm Weight:73kg Club: Dinamo

Personal Best: 3000msteeple:9:08.39(2009),1500m:4:04.59(2009)Season’s Best: 3000msteeple:9:17.57Barcelona30.7.10

One of the hardest won medals in Barcelona went to Yulia Zarudneva. Beaten into silver at last summer’s World Championships by Spain’s Marta Domínguez, Zarudneva came into the Spaniard’s backyard and led all the way to lift the title.

“[Last year] I was not yet mentally ready to win. I did not have enough experience. But after Berlin my approach to training and competition was completely different. I was firmly decided that I would not let Domínguez defeat me at home.”

That determination showed through, the Russian leading every step of the way, slowly but surely drawing the sting of the Spaniard’s famed fi-nishing kick. Crucial to her win was the crispness of her hurdling.

At every barrier she stole a half metre for which Dominguez had to use up precious reserves. At the final water jump, the difference was even more marked as Zarudneva built on her advan-tage to cross the line first.

Never slow to recognise a great performance, even the Spanish crowd rose to acknowledge her.

Zarudneva hails from Volgograd in southern Rus-sia. Three years ago when she was pregnant with her daughter, Lenochke, her first coach, Genna-dy Naumov, died.

Since then she has been coached by Mikhail Kuznetsov. Before she left the city on the Volga she promised her daughter, who watched the race on television with her grandmother, that she would bring back gold. With two years to go to the Olympics, what hopes does Zarduneva have for London 2012?

”I decided for myself that it would be a good idea to move gradually. My coach said the same. First win the European championships. Then the World Championships. And then the Olympics.”

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WorldChampionships: 3000msteeple:2/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 3000msteeple:1/2010

Sophie Duarte (FRA) 3000m steeple

Born:31.7.81Height: 171 cm Weight: 54 kg Club: CA Balma

Personal Best: 3000msteeple:9:25.62NRSeason’s Best: 3000msteeple:9:35.62Barcelona30.7.10

Sophie Duarte was born in Rodez and to date she has set three French records over the barriers, the first coming in 2007 when she made a big breakthrough and ran 9:29.01 in Heusden, a mark she improved upon later that summer to 9:27.51 when finishing fifth at the World Championships in Osaka.

Great things were expected the following year but health problems intervened and she missed the Olympic Games. She bounced back last year to run 9:25.62, which is still the French national re-cord, at the Golden Gala meeting in Rome.

Injury problems during the winter meant that she only ran one cross country this year – winning the French inter-clubs championship in February – and she suffered further knee problems while trai-ning for the track season, her first race in June.

However, despite her interrupted preparations, she was still sharp enough to qualify for the Euro-pean Athletics Championships and then the final of her main event.

“I’ve got two feelings about this season. On one hand, it was good to make the European final and run my best time of the season so far in that race. On the other hand, I’m frustrated. I’m a long way from my personal best and national record. Nevertheless, I’m still young for a steeplechaser, I can improve in the future so I’m not going to dwell on this,” Duarte told French media immediately after her run in Barcelona.

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WorldChampionships: 3000msteeple:15/2009,5/2007EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 3000msteeple:7/2010EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 3000msteeple:9/2003

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Born: 16.02.86 Mersin Height: 168 cm Weight: 60 kg Club: ENKA Istanbul

Perhaps Nevin Yanit was right. Maybe it was pre-or-dained that she would win the final in Barcelona. But even after she had skimmed over the barriers and into the history books as Turkey’s first European sprint hurdles champion, the 24-year-old still could not believe the time. 12.63, it said.

“I cannot believe what happened,” she said. “My room number is 1263, and my phone number ends with these digits. Everything in my daily life here reminds me of this record. It was like an omen for victory. It is crazy.”

Pretty crazy, yes, for this was her second Turkish re-cord of the day and brought her the gold ahead of Derval O’Rourke. It was a great turnaround in fortu-nes for Yanit, for she had failed to even finish in her heat in Göteborg four years ago.

“In 2006 I dreamt about a gold medal and tonight I am the European champion,” she said.

She has had some success since, however, reaching Olympic and world semi-finals, and becoming the European under 23 champion in 2007 when she also won the Mediterranean Games title and set a Turkish indoor record over 60m.

She was World University Games champion last year, and arrived in Barcelona with high hopes having run a windy 12.74 at the European Team Championships 1st League in Budapest. She mat-ched that time, legally, in Barcelona in July, her first Turkish record of the summer. Her second came on the same track just a few weeks later in the semi-final when she ran 12.71 before her all-conquering run in the final.

Personal Bests: 100mhurdles:12.63NR(2010),60mhurdles:8:00NR(2007)Season’s Best: 12.63Barcelona31.7.10


OlympicGames: 100mhurdles:sf/2008WorldChampionships: 100mhurdles:sf/2007,sf/2009WorldIndoorChampionships: 60mhurdles:sf/2008EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 100mhurdles&4x100m:H/2006,100mhurdles:1/2010EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 60mhurdles:H/2007WorldJuniorChampionships: 100mhurdles/2004EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 100mhurdles:sf/2005,100mhurdles:1/2007WorldUniversityGames: 100mhurdles:1/2009,100mhurdles:2/2007, 100mhurdles:sf/2005MediterraneanGames: 100mhurdles:1/2009

Nevin Yanit (TUR) 100m hurdles

Derval O’Rourke (IRL) 100m hurdles

Born: 28.05.81 Height: 168 cm Weight: 57 kg Club: Leevale AC

Personal Bests: 100mhurdles:12.65NR(2010),60mhurdles:7.84NR(2006)Season’s Best: 100mhurdles:12.65Barcelona31.7.10

Derval O’Rourke was overjoyed to win a silver me-dal in Barcelona. The former world indoor cham-pion hadn’t even been in Europe’s top ten before arriving in the Catalan capital but she sliced the Irish record down to 12.65 for second ahead of the favourite, Carolyn Nytra of Germany, who took bronze in 12.68.

O’Rourke just missed out on gold for the second time having shared the same medal in 2006. This time she was short by just 0.02s, matching the smal-lest losing margin ever from 1971 when Karen Balzer won gold for Germany.

“I would love to have won and I just was two hun-dredths away from gold,” she said. “But I cannot complain as I ran the race of my life and beat the Irish record.”

Despite a bronze from the 2005 World University

Games, O’Rourke only burst into the limelight in 2006 when she was a surprise winner of the world indoor title in Moscow. She struggled to reach the same heights outdoors, however, failing to make the final at the Osaka worlds in 2007 and going out in the heats of the 2008 Olympics. Things looked bri-ghter again in 2009 when she snatched a bronze at the European indoors and was fourth at the Berlin World Championships.

But injury struck early in 2010 and the former gym-nast and hockey player, a sports graduate of University College in Dublin, where she now lives, missed all of January. The omens weren’t great be-fore she came to Barcelona either for she false-star-ted while competing in the Olympic stadium in July. But at 29, the post-graduate management student had the experience to get it right when it counted. She was greeted by Irish sports minister Mary Hana-fin when she returned home.

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OlympicGames: 100mhurdles:H/2004,100mhurdles:H/2008WorldChampionships: 100mhurdles:4/2009,sf/2007, 100mhurdles:sf/2005,H/2003WorldIndoorChampionships: 60mhurdles:1/2006,sf/2003EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 100mhurdles:2/2010,2/2006&4x100m:H/2006EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 60mhurdles:3/2009,60mhurdles:H/2005,H/2002WorldJuniorChampionships: 100mhurdles:sf/2000EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 100mhurdles:4/2003,4/2001EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships: 100mhurdles:H/1999WorldUniversityGames: 100mhurdles&4x100m:3/2005

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Born: 26.06.81 Height: 181 cm Weight: 68 kg Club: Russian Army

Natalya Antyukh switched back to the hurdles last year, because the one-lap hurdles was her first event when she started competing as a teenager. She was good at it then, too. In 1998, as a 17-year-old, Antyukh competed in the world youth games, coming away with the gold medal in a time of 59.94. 12 years later in the Lluís Companys stadium this summer, the wheel turned full circle when the now 29-year- old again clinched gold, this time in a championship-record 52.92.

“I am in shock at the result,”admitted Antyukh as she came off the track. “I thought at the most it would be in the low 54 seconds. And to get a cham-pionship record!

For me that is very significant, because it used to belong to Marina Stepanova. I know her very well,

we are in touch, and she even gives me tips.”

Antyukh’s return to the hurdles is an odyssey all of its own. After winning world youth gold she went through a period of doubt and was on the point of leaving athletics altogether: “Fortunately, into my life came coach Yuriy Anisimov. Yuriy purposefully prepared me for the 2001 World Championships on the flat: I was in the reserve 4x400m relay squad. At this point, I forgot about the hurdles.”

Subsequently, she accrued medals over the flat 400m. Her biggest performances came in the Athens Olympics when she took 400m bronze be-fore adding silver in the 4x400m relay, now promo-ted to gold after the disqualification of the USA be-cause of a drugs infringement.

Personal Bests: 1400mh: 52.92 (2010) 400m: 49.85 (2004)Season’s Best: 400mh:52.92Barcelona30.7.10


OlympicGames: 400m:3/2004,4x400m:1/2004WorldChampionships: 400mhurdles:6/2009,400m:7/2001,sf/2005,6/2007EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 400mhurdles:1/2010

Natalya Antyukh (RUS) 400m hurdles

Vania Stambolova (BUL) 400m hurdles

Born:28.11.83Height:173cm Weight:53kg Club: Klasa

Personal Bests: 400mhurdles:53.82NR(2010),400m:49.53NR(2006)Season’s Best: 400mhurdles:53.82NRBarcelona30.7.10

It was always Vania Stambolova’s avowed aim to be a world record breaker at the 400m hurdles ra-ther than the flat 400m. It has not yet quite worked out that way but the Bulgarian cannot be faulted for confidence: “I thought I could win today,” said the Bulgarian in Barcelona. “But Natalya [An-tyukh] was too fast for me.”

So it was silver for the fast finishing Stambolova to add to the 400m flat title she won four years ago in Sweden.

Stambalova has always switched between the flat and the hurdles. In 2006 she lifted the Euro-pean title on the flat, a year after winning Balkan hurdles gold. After serving a doping suspension between 2007 and 2009 she added the world student games 400mh title last year. This year she has competed over both hurdles and the flat.

With a time of 53.82 in the Catalan capital she has reduced her best by 0.73 and set a Bulgarian record.

Stambolova entered the world of sport via gym-nastics, but quickly gave that up after one year, when, at the age of 14, she switched to athletics “because it was an individual sport”.

Then in the autumn of 2004 she received a phone call out of the blue from Georgi Dimitrov, former coach to Yordanka Donkova and Ginka Zagor-cheva, owners of the four fastest times ever over the sprint hurdles.

Dimitrov wanted to coach her: “I called Vanya because I saw great potential in her,” said Dimi-trov.

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WorldChampionships: 400mhurdles:sf/2009,H/2005EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 400mhurdles:2/2010,400m:1/2006WorldCup: 400m:2/2006WorldIndoorChampionships: 400m:3/2010,2/2006

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Born:8.11.83Height:193cm Weight: 75 kg Club: ASK

Blanka Vlašic won Croatia’s first ever medal in the women’s high jump at the European cham-pionships in Barcelona when she collected gold with a championship record of 2.03. “This is not an easy season for me,” admitted the winner. “I’m not myself this year. I had zero confidence tonight and was struggling hard to achieve a good jump. Luc-kily it was enough to win.”

It was not much of a consolation, but behind her was the Olympic champion, Tia Hellebaut of Bel-gium, who had come out of retirement to compete in the Catalan capital. It was in Beijing that Vlašic had the galling experience of finishing second to the Belgian with the highest ever non-winning hei-ght in history of 2.05m.

Interestingly, the Continental Cup will mark only the

second time that the European gold medallist will jump in the stadium, which is home to Hajduk Split football club: “As far as I can remember, I only jum-ped once at the stadium,” Vlasic said recently.

“I was about 14 and I can’t remember whether it was training or a competition. I didn’t think then about how Poljud wasn’t used for athletics. But now I’m really excited about the idea and can’t wait for the stands to be filled for athletics.”

World champion indoors and out, as well as ow-ning a hatful of other titles, Vlasic is only missing the Olympic gold medal. She was named Blanka after the city of Casablanca, the venue of her father’s victory in the Mediterranean Games decathlon of 1983.

Personal Best: HJ: 2.08m (2009) Season’s Best: HJ:2.03mRoma10.6.10


OlympicGames: HJ:2/2008,11/2004WorldChampionships: HJ:1/2009,1/2007,dnq/2005,7/2003,6/2001EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: HJ:1/2010,4/2006,5/2002WorldIndoorChampionships: HJ:1/2010,1/2008,2/2006,3/2004,4/2003WorldJuniorChampionships: HJ:1/2000,1/2002

Blanka Vlašic (CRO) High Jump

Emma Green (SWE) High Jump

Born: 08.12.84 Height: 180 cm Weight: 62 kg Club: Örgryte IS

Personal Best: HJ: 2.01 (2010) Season’s Best: 2.01 Barcelona 1.8.10

Emma Green went to Barcelona with a best of 1.98m and captured a surprise silver with a per-sonal best 2.01m. Green was delighted with the medal: “It’s a fabulous silver medal,” she said. “It’s great and unbelievable that I’m back after my injury in Paris. It was just a perfect night for me. Now I look forward to jumping even higher. I’m in top shape.”

Essentially, the outcome in the European cham-pionships was decided at 2.01m, a height at which Green’s rival for silver, Ariane Friedrich, had her first failure while gold medallist Blanka Vlašic went over at the first time of asking. Green, meanwhile, who had been jumping well all eve-ning, had the jump of her life, clearing at the second attempt and moving up from bronze to silver. She gave the bar a hefty clout but it stayed on, rocking gently as she looked on in a mixture of delight and relief.

“So much has been going on this last week,” said

Green back home in Sweden and preparing for the Stockholm Diamond League. “And there have been so many thoughts going round in my head after that 2.01m jump. It was wonderful to finally get over 2m, even 2.01! Especially after that difficult period I experienced after bronze in 2005 when I suffered mentally and it was difficult for me to find any pleasure in the high jump.”

In her first year in athletics at the age of 14, Green cleared 1.74 and ran the 200m in 25.52. Like com-patriots Kajsa Bergquist and Carolina Klüft, she won her first international competition when she took the gold medal at the European Youth Olympic Festival. After taking bronze in the Hel-sinki World Championships in 2005, she tried her hand successfully at sprinting when she clocked 7.42i for 60m, 11.58 for 100m and 23.02 for 200m as well as recording lifetime bests for the long jump and triple jump. But since 2007 she has concen-trated on the high jump coached by boyfriend Tregaro, who also coaches Christian Olsson.

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OlympicGames: HJ:9/2008 WorldChampionships: HJ:7/2009,7/2007,3/2005EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: HJ:2/2010,11/2006WorldIndoorChampionships: HJ:5/2010,dnq/2008,dnq/2006WorldJuniorChampionships: HJ:9/2002

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Born: 16.07.1980 Height:163cm Weight: 52 kg Club: Dinamo

What an athlete! It is eight years since Svetlana Feo-fanova last won the European title but she regained it in handsome fashion in Barcelona with a first-time clearance at 4.75, equalling the highest vault (also hers) seen this summer in Europe.

With just five jumps, one of them a failure at 4.70, she once more knows how it feels to hang a gold medal around her neck. The Russian has a full set of medals from the World Championships, silver and bronze from the Olympics and now her second Eu-ropean gold.

With her archrival, Yelena Isinbayeva, having a year off, Feofanova has taken full advantage and places herself once again in the limelight. She has also outdone Isinbayeva in the history books. No one had ever won the women’s pole vault twice until Barcelona. Isinbayeva took silver behind Feo-fanova in Munich and won gold in 2006. The rivalry continues.

“I was very sure I would achieve gold,” said Feofa-nova. “As for my missing rivals, Anna Rogowska and Yelena Isinbayeva, I just depend on myself. I don’t care about my rivals. This is my victory.”

Once a gymnast and included in the Russian team for the 1996 Olympics, Feofanova switched to pole vaulting at the age of 17. From a humble family, she sometimes had to contribute to the family coffers from her stipend as a gymnast in order to put food on the table.

Once she converted to the pole vault, though, the money just kept coming. “Life is easier now,” she once said after banking yet another cheque for a world record (11 in total), “but it is always easier to spend money than to earn it. I like fashionable clothes, but don’t have much time to wear them. Besides, Moscow is an expen-sive city.”

Personal Best: PV: 4.88m (2004) Season’s Best: PV:4.75mBarcelona30.7.10


OlympicGames: PV:3/2008,2/2004WorldChampionships: PV:3/2007,1/2003,2/2001EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: PV:1/2010,4/2006,1/2002WorldCup: PV:2/2002WorldIndoorChampionships: PV:2/2010,5/2008,3/2006,3/2004,1/2003,2/2001

Svetlana Feofanova (RUS) Pole Vault

Lisa Ryzih (GER) Pole Vault


Personal Bests: PV:4.65(2010),4.55i(2010)Season’s Best: PV:4.65Barcelona30.7.10

Former world youth and junior champion, Lisa Ry-zih finally overtook her 11-year older sister, Nastja, when she cleared 4.65m in Barcelona to clinch European bronze. The family record, however, is held by her father and coach, Vladimir, who cleared 5.40 in the 70s. Their mother was also an athlete, a high jumper. At the age of 14 Lisa had cleared 3.92, a world age-group best, and two years later she had raised the bar to 4.30. “My father is the most important person for me,” says Lisa, 21.

“He sees his role not only as a coach, but as a fa-ther who only wants the best for his daughter.”

Ryzih was so emotional at having won bronze

that she was incapable of taking an attempt at 4.75 which, had she cleared it, would have given her silver.

She stood and looked at the height for a long time until finally she ran towards the pit with the clock running down and released her pole wi-thout attempting the jump: “Why didn’t I jump the 4.75? Well, I really wanted to, but I felt so empty and had no energy anymore. At that moment I already had a medal for sure, so I didn’t jump.”

Lisa has had to live in the shadow of her big sister for so long, but now finally she has forged success of her own. For the bronze medallist it was an emotional evening.


EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: PV:3/2010WorldJuniorChampionships: PV:4q/2006,1/2004

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Born:13.7.1981Height: 176 cm Weight: 56 kg Club: RVS

Ineta Radevica produced a major upset at the Barcelona European championships by winning the gold medal with a massive career best leap of 6.92m, breaking her previous best of 6.80m set back in 2005.

In addition to her European title, the 29-year-old Radevica broke her own national record and be-came the first ever female medal winner from La-tvia at the European championships to match Sta-nislav Olijar’s win in the 110m hurdles in Göteborg 2006. Radevica’s previous best finishes at a major event were respective fifth spots at the 2005 Euro-pean indoors in Madrid and 2006 world indoors in Moscow.

The Latvian’s success in Barcelona came by the narrowest of the margins since Portugal’s Naide Gomes also landed at 6.92 but Radevica’s second best attempt of 6.87 against Gomes’ 6.68 gave her

the gold medal.

Barcelona’s contest was dominated by Radevica, who led the ranking after every round; she only lost the top spot when Gomes managed 6.92m in round four but the Latvian immediately responded with the same leap to keep the gold medal position till the end.

It was in the triple jump where she first made her name, winning American collegiate (NCAA) titles in 2003 and 2004 while at the University of Nebraska studying Economics.

Radevica also got bronze medals at both horizon-tal jumps at the 2003 European U23 championships, her last international medals until Barcelona.The Moscow-based Latvian is coached by a living-legend of the men’s triple jump, Igor Ter-Ovanes-sian, a three-time European champion.

Personal Bests: LJ:6.92m(2010),TJ:14.12m(2004)Season’s Best: 6.92 NR (+0.7) Barcelona 28.7.10


OlympicGames: LJ:Q/2004;TJ:Q/2004WorldChampionships: Q/2005EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: LJ:1/2010WorldIndoorChampionships: LJ:5/2006,6/2008EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: LJ:4/2005,8/2007

Ineta Radevica (LAT) Long Jump

Naide Gomes (POR) Long Jump


Personal Bests: LJ:7.12(2008),Heptathlon:6230p(2005)Season’s Best: 6.92m (+0.1) Barcelona 28.7.10

Naide Gomes started competing under the flag of her birth country Sao Tome and Príncipe and represented it at the Sydney Olympics – where she was her country’s flag carrier in the opening ceremony, though she has lived in Portugal since she was 11 years old. Gomes received Portuguese nationality in 2001; by then she had already set no fewer than 30 national records for Sao Tome in a wide range of specialities including 100m hur-dles, high jump, long jump, triple jump, shot put, javelin throw and heptathlon.

Her full name is Enezenaide do Rosario da Vera Gomes but thankfully for stadium announcers and journalists everywhere she has decided to adopt a shortened version. “I am proud of my name but it is a long one, even for Portuguese names, and my family members always call me Naide.”

Twice European indoor long jump champion in Madrid 2005 and Birmingham 2007, the European outdoor gold seems to be elusive for Gomes, sin-ce the 30-year-old finished second in Barcelona as she did in Göteborg years ago.

Gomes matched the gold medal winning leap of 6.92m in Barcelona but she had to settle for a silver medal behind Latvia’s Ineta Radevica by virtue of a shorter second best jump. Before concentrating on long jumping, Gomes’ name was more closely associated with the com-bined events. In addition to her World Indoor Championships pentathlon gold medal in 2004, she also competed in the heptathlon outdoors at the 2004 Olympic Games and 2005 World Cham-pionships.

She holds a degree in physiotherapy.


OlympicGames: Heptathlon:13/2004;100mhurdles8h4/2000; LJ:31q/2008WorldChampionships: LJ:4/2007&2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: LJ:2/2006&2010WorldIndoorChampionships: Pentathlon:1/2004,LJ:1/2008,2/2010,3/2006EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: LJ:1/2005&2007

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Born:4.6.83Height: 175 cm Weight: 57 kg Club: —

Olga Saladuha seems to follow in the footsteps of her fellow Ukrainian Inessa Kravets, the world re-cord holder for the event, by winning the European title in Barcelona with a margin of 25 cm, the lon-gest in the history of the championships.

She produced a fifth round leap of 14.81m to bag the triple jump gold medal with a European season leading mark, barely three centimetres shy of her career best set in 2008.

The 27-year-old Saladuha backed her winning leap with three other 14.60+ efforts, meaning any of them would have been good enough to get the gold.

“I have bought a new pair of shoes for the triple jump and I am glad that they fit me well and helped me to perform well. The target for Barcelona was to finish on top. I made it,” she said.

What many people do not know is that Saladuha

almost quit athletics four years ago. She struggled with a spate of injuries for over two years at the start of the decade. By the end of 2004 she had jumped only 13.53 and was so disillusioned that she decided to leave athletics. “It was a hasty decision,” she said then. “I had already decided to give up athletics but my first coaches asked me to try once more. I did not want to do this but agreed more because of respect for them.”

Finally, after a string of fine results in the fourth to seventh places range from 2006 to 2008 at the ma-jor championships, Saladuha decided to stick to athletics and today with a gold medal around her neck she certainly has no regrets.

In 2004 Saladuha graduated from the institute of sports in Donetsk as a coach in athletics and physi-cal education teacher. From 2004 till date, she has been a student of the jurisprudence faculty in Kiev’s “Ukraine” University.

Personal Best: TJ: 14.84 (2008)Season’s Best: 14.81m(+1.1)Barcelona31.7.10


OlympicGames: TJ:9/2008WorldChampionships: TJ:7/2007EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: TJ:1/2010,4/2006WorldIndoorChampionships: TJ:6/2008

Olga Saladuha (UKR) Triple Jump

Simona La Mantia (ITA) Triple Jump

Born:14.04.1983 Height: 177 cm Weight: 65 kg Club: G.A. FIAMME GIALLE

Personal Bests: TJ:14.69(2005),LJ:6.48(2005)Season’s Best: 14.56(-0.1)Barcelona31.7.10

Simona La Mantia’s dream came true in Bar-celona as she made it to the podium of a ma-jor championship for the first time in her career thanks to a 14.56m effort.

“I never thought that measure was to be enough to bag a medal of any colour in Barcelona but luckily it was. It’s a great achievement for me since I have been struggling with injuries for the last three years albeit I never thought of giving up athletics,” she said.

The 27-year-old had a funny morale booster in Barcelona as her friends showed a banner from the stands saying: “From Sicilia to Barcelona to witness Simona’s leaps.”

La Mantia leapt into reckoning with her first jump itself, clearing 14.56m for a season best. Des-pite not going further in her remaining attempts, that figure proved to be enough to secure silver against the cream of the speciality, including the powerful Russian duo of Olga Kucherenko and Tatyana Kolchanova.

The Italian became a very promising athlete after landing two European U23 medals, silver in 2003 in Bydgoszcz and gold in 2005 in Erfurt, but her career was marred by injuries thereafter. Holder of an impressive 14.69m performance at the age of 22 in 2005, La Mantia’s 14.24 effort in May 2010 in her hometown of Palermo was her first 14m plus leap in nearly four years.


OlympicGames: TJ:17q/2004WorldChampionships: TJ:14q/2005EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: TJ:2/2010WorldIndoorChampionships: TJ:11/2004EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: TJ:8/2005EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: TJ:1/2005,2/2003

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Born: 12.10.80 Height: 180 cm Weight: 57 kg Club: BREST

Nadzeya Ostapchuk is enjoying the best season of her long and medal-laden career after adding the European title in Barcelona to the world indoor crown she won in Doha earlier in the year.

Born in the southern Belarus town of Stolin, Ostap-chuk was a promising basketball player, but opted for athletics and quickly excelled in the shot put – winning the world and European junior titles in 1998 and 1999. Success quickly followed in the senior ranks and Ostapchuk landed a world outdoor silver medal in 2003 before climbing one place higher up the podium at the 2005 edition in Helsinki.

The Belarussian athlete missed out by 0.01 on gold at the 2006 European Athletics Championships in Göteborg and so followed a period when she had to play second fiddle to New Zealand’s Valerie Vili at the major global championships.

Ostapchuk, who is coached by Aliksandr Efimov,

landed world silver in 2007 and Olympic bronze in 2008. However, she admits a more professional ap-proach over the past year or so has started to reap rewards.

“I treat everything in my life a lot more seriously than a few years ago,” she says. “I’ve change my techni-que but I also changed my lifestyle.

There are no discotheques no more and I go to sleep earlier.” In February she signalled her intent by posting a massive new national record of 21.70m at the Be-larus indoor championships before defeating her long-time rival Vili to land the world indoor title in Doha.

In Barcelona she also secured the European title with a dominant performance to add another gold medal to her impressive collection.

Personal Best: 21.09m (2005)Season’s Best: 20.95m Grodno 26.6.10


OlympicGames: SP:4/2004,3/2008WorldChampionships: Q/1999,7/2001,2/2003,1/2005,2/2007EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 5/2002,2/2006,1/2010WorldIndoorChampionships: 2/2001,2/2003,8/2004,6/2006,2/2008,1/2010EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 6/2000,1/2005EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 1/2001EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships: 1/1999

Nadzeya Ostapchuk (BLR) Shot Put

Olga Ivanova (RUS) Shot Put

Born: 6.4.79 Height:183cm Weight: 89 kg Club:LuchMoscow

Personal Best: 19.48m (2008)Season’s Best: 19.18mMoscow29.6.10

Russia’s Olga Ivanova is at last starting to earn the rewards for a long international career.

A member of the powerful Luch Moscow club, Ivanova earned her best ever international finish at the European Athletics Championships in Bar-celona earlier this summer, producing a solid se-ries to place fifth with a best of 19.02m.

Ivanova improved her personal best by almost a metre in 2005 with a best throw of 18.56m and also made her international debut, placing a respectable seventh, at the European Athletics Indoor Championships that year. She also made her world championship debut in 2005 but failed to qualify for the final.

In 2006, she improved her lifetime best to 18.97m, but it wasn’t until the Olympic year in 2008 that

the Russia made a real breakthrough, registering 19.48m in Tula.

Sadly, in Beijing she could not repeat that throw, but finished a solid ninth inside the Bird’s Nest Sta-dium.

In 2009, during an abbreviated season, she lan-ded victory in the European Champions Clubs Cup in Castellon, but 2010 has proved the high point of her long athletics history.

The 31-year-old landed the Russian Indoor title in February and finished 10th at the World Indoor Championship in Doha. A season’s best of 19.18m followed in Moscow during the outdoor season before her fifth place finish at the European championships in Barcelona behind Nadzeya Ostapchuk of Belarus.


OlympicGames: SP:9/2008WorldChampionships: Q/2005EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 5/2010WorldIndoorChampionships: Q/2006,Q/2010EuropeanAthleticsIndoorChampionships: 7/2005

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Sandra Perkovic (CRO) Discus

Born: 21.6.90 Height: — Weight: — Club: Zagreb

The rising star of Croatian athletics Sandra Perko-vic will be given a rousing reception in front of her home supporters in Split after becoming the youn-gest ever woman to land the European women’s discus title in Barcelona earlier this summer.

In an event where its performers don’t reach their peak until their early thirties, the 20-year-old Sandra Perkovic shattered that theory by grabbing gold thanks to her sixth round throw of 64.67m.

The Zagreb-born Perkovic played basketball and volleyball at school but quickly developed as a dis-cus thrower and shot putter. Under the coaching of Olympic shot putter Ivan Ivancic she first made her mark internationally by winning world youth and European junior medals in 2007 and World junior bronze the following year.

However, the following winter she suffered a near-fatal incident after doctors misdiagnosed appendi-citis. Her appendix burst causing a sepsis that requi-red two emergency surgeries.

She lost 15kg in weight but she returned to training after just a three-month break and landed the 2009 European junior crown with a new national record of 62.44m.

She also finished ninth at the World Championships in Berlin later that summer. Perkovic has adjusted seamlessly to her first season as a senior thrower and set a personal best of 66.85m at the Croatian winter throwing championships in Split in March. She then backed this up in spectacular fashion by securing the European gold medal in the Catalan capital with her final round effort.

Personal Best: 66.85mNRSplit6.3.10Season’s Best: 66.85mNRSplit6.3.10


WorldChampionships: DT:9/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 1/2010WorldJuniorChampionships: Q/2006,3/2008WorldYouthChampionships: Q/2007,2/2007EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships: SP:5/2009,2/2007,1/2009

Nicoleta Grasu (ROU) Discus

Born: 11.9.71 Height: 176 cm Weight: 88 kg Club: ENKA Istanbul

Personal Best: 68.80m (1999)Season’s Best: 63.78mParis16.7.10

After enjoying a 20-year-old international career there is very little that Romanian veteran Nicoleta Grasu has not experienced in the sport.

She made her championship bow at the 1990 World Junior Championships and competed at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, finishing 13th.

She gradually improved on the international stage, finishing seventh at the 1993 World Cham-pionships and fourth at the 1994 European Athle-tics Championship in Helsinki. Her big breakthrou-gh, though, came in 1998 when she hurled the discus out to a new personal best of 67.80m and also claimed her first major championship me-dal – a bronze at the European Athletics Cham-pionships in Budapest.

Grasu set her lifetime best of 68.80m – which still stands today - the following year and also secu-red bronze at the World Championships in Seville.

She climbed one place higher up the podium at the 2001 edition of the worlds in Edmonton and a European silver medal followed in 2002 as she maintained her high level of consistency.

Her career continued with further bronze medals at the 2006 European championships and 2007 World Championships.

Despite her phenomenal ability to climb the po-dium at European and World Championships, she has frustratingly underperformed at Olympic Ga-mes. Despite making five appearances her best ever finish is sixth at the 2004 edition in Athens.

Now aged 38 she shows no signs of slowing down. Last year she landed another world bronze in Berlin before winning silver in Barcelona at the Europeans earlier this year, where she was only denied gold in the last round by Croatia’s Sandra Perkovic – an athlete 18 years her junior.


OlympicGames: 7/1996,Q/2000,6/2004,12/2008WorldChampionships: 7/1993,10/1997,3/1999,2/2001,5/2005,3/2007, 3/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 4/1994,3/1998,3/2006,2/2010WorldCup: 2/1998

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Betty Heidler (GER) Hammer

Born:14.10.83Height: 174 cm Weight: 80 kg Club: LG Eintracht Frankfurt

When Betty Heidler won the world title in 2007 she did so by just 2cm. In Barcelona the 26-year-old added the European crown, winning by a comfor-table margin over the two favourites, Anita Wlodar-czyk and Tatyana Lysenko, the world record holder and defending champion respectively.

Heidler found her best form of the season when it mattered most to become the first German cham-pion at this event. She had the two biggest throws of the night, 75.92 in the second round and the win-ning mark of 76.38 in the fourth.

Heidler claimed she struggled to stay focused du-ring the competition but she clearly has steady nerves. She lost her world title on home soil last year, but after winning in Osaka two years earlier she took part in a celebrity biathlon competition (skiing and shooting) and hit a perfect score in the

shooting.

Heidler began competing internationally in 2000 but her connection with sport goes back much fur-ther, for her grandfather, Martin Riefstahl, took part in the 1936 Olympic torch relay. No doubt he’d have been proud when she broke the German record in the World Championships last year with 77.12m – putting her fifth on the all-time list - especially as it was in her home city of Berlin.

Heidler hasn’t won an Olympic medal but she came close in 2004 when she was fourth. Last year she won the World University Games title having be-gun a law degree at Fernuniversitat Hagen in 2007. She began athletics at 14 and took up hammer throwing in 1998. She moved to Frankfurt in 2001 to attend a sports school and she now works there for the German Federal Police.

Personal Best: 77.12m NR (2009)Season’s Best: 76.38mBarcelona30.7.10


OlympicGames: HT:9/2008,4/2004WorldChampionships: HT:2/2009,1/2007,dnq/2005,11/2003EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: HT:1/2010,H/2006WorldJuniorChampionships: HT:dnq/2002,dnq/2000EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships HT:2/2005,4/2003EuropeanAthleticsJuniorChampionships HT:9/2001WorldUniversityGames: HT:1/2009

Tatyana Lysenko (RUS) Hammer

Born:09.10.83 Height: 180 cm Weight: 84 kg Club:RussianArmy,Moscow

Personal Best: 77.80 HT NR (2006)Season’s Best: 76.03Zhukovskiy26.06.10

Tatyana Lysenko’s opening throw in the Barce-lona final brought back memories of four years ago. The Russian started with 74.63 not far short of the championships record she produced in the first round in 2006 when she went on to dominate, extending that record by another couple of me-tres.

It wasn’t to be this time, however, as the former world record holder had to settle for silver with a best of 75.65, relinquishing her title to Germany’s Betty Heidler.

“I am a bit upset I didn’t defend my title,” she said. “But I really fought hard and silver is not too bad at all.”

Victory would have marked the end of a journey for Lysenko who famously set five world records from July 2005 to August 2006 but then failed an out of competition drugs test on 9 May 2007 after which her 2007 world record of 78.61 was annulled and she served a two-year ban to 14 July 2009.

Having missed the World Championships in Osa-ka and the Beijing Olympics, she returned to ac-tion last summer and finished sixth at the worlds in Berlin. She had won world bronze in 2005, a year before taking the European title in Göteborg.

“I’m more experienced now,” she said after ta-king silver in Barcelona.


OlympicGames: HT:dnq/2004WorldChampionships: HT:6th/2009,3rd/2005EuropeanChampionships: HT:6th/2010,HT:1st/2006EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: HT:6/2003WorldUniversityGames: HT:5/2003

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Born: 2.10.85 Height: 172 cm Weight:63kg Club: TSV Bayer 04 Leverkusen

Linda Stahl was the surprise winner of the European title in Barcelona this summer to become the latest star to emerge from the production line of great German women’s javelin throwers.

Aged just 24 she emerged from the pack as a ge-nuine champion with a stunning new personal best of 66.81m to defeat her more established rivals in the Catalan capital.

Raised in Blomberg in the North Rhine-Westphalia province, Stahl was physically gifted as a youngster playing handball and tennis to a high standard.

But she set her heart on athletics from her mid-teens and credits the moment she linked up with renowned javelin coach Helge Zolkau in 2003 as a major milestone in her journey to the top.

Zolkau also coached Steffi Nerius and Stahl has benefited from working with the now retired 2009

world champion. In 2007 she landed the European U23 title. The following year she set a new personal best of 66.06m in Leverkusen, but was overlooked for Beijing because it was after the Olympic dea-dline.In Barcelona, though, she produced the perfor-mance of her life as a fifth round throw sealed a memorable gold medal, although even Stahl was a little surprised at her success.

“Before the competition when I looked at the start lists I thought I could finish four or five, maybe I dreamt of a bronze medal.”

Yet Stahl also admitted she has developed as an athlete thanks to her time training with Nerius. “At first it was my dream to be as good as her and be as successful as her,” said Stahl. “What became clear over time was that there were some things where I would be as good as Steffi, and I became more confident.”

Personal Best: 66.81 Barcelona 29.7.10 Season’s Best: 66.81 Barcelona 29.7.10


WorldChampionships: JT:8/2007,6/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: 1/2010EuropeanAthleticsU23Championships: 1/2007

Linda Stahl (GER) Javelin

Mariya Abakumova (RUS) Javelin

Born: 15.01.1986 Height: 179 cm Weight: 80 kg Club:LuchMoscow

Personal Best: JT: 70.78m (2008) Season’s Best: JT: 68.89m Doha 14.05.10

Born in Stavropol in south-west Russia, Mariya Abakumova is among the world’s very best jave-lin throwers.

A gifted junior, Abakumova finished fourth at the 2003 World Youth Championships – on her maiden international appearance. Two years later the Russian confirmed her potential by striking gold at the European Athletics Junior Championships in Kaunas, Lithuania, and also finishing eighth at the World Student Games, setting a national ju-nior record of 59.53m.

In 2006 she smashed through the 60m-barrier for the first time in her career with a 60.16m effort before making a massive advance in 2007. She launched the spear out to a new lifetime best of 64.28m and placed a respectable seventh at the World Championships in Osaka.

Her hasty rise continued in 2008 when she en-

joyed her best season to date. She fired the jave-lin out to a massive new national record of 70.78m to earn a silver medal at the Beijing Olympics Ga-mes behind Czech Barbora Spotakova.

She continued to impress in 2009 and led the qua-lifiers for the World Championships final in Berlin with a mighty 68.92m. However, she could not quite match that performance in the final and had to set settle for the bronze medal with a best of 66.06m.

Abakumova started 2010 in splendid form with a 68.89m effort in the opening Diamond League meeting in Doha. However, her form has been up and down since them. She was a shade disap-pointing at the European championships when finishing fifth, but the 24-year-old remains a fear-some competitor and should not be underesti-mated in Split.


OlympicGames: JT:2/2008WorldChampionships: JT:3/2009EuropeanAthleticsChampionships: JT:5/2010

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4x100m

Before 2010, Olesya Povh was one of the also-rans of international athle-tics with just a personal best of 11.70 to show. But this year the fortunes of the 22-year-old have taken a turn for the better. Barcelona 2010 provided her the perfect platform to lay claim among the continent’s elite. In the winter, Povh produced a fine 7.23 60m performance, then won the national indoor title in style before contesting the world indoors in Doha where she advanced to the semi finals.

The outdoor season kicked off with a PB of 11.29 to take the Ukrainian title in Donetsk but Povh found complete success in the 4x100m relay alongside her compatriots. After coming third at the SPAR European Team Cham-pionships in Bergen in 43.72, Povh launched her team-mates from the blocks in Barcelona to run fantastic legs and win the final in 42.29.

Olesya Povh (UKR)


Club: Zaporozhye In

Personal Bests:60m:7.23(10), 100m: 11.29 (10)Season’s Best: 11.29 Donetsk 1.07.10

Undoubtedly Mariya Ryemyen has enjoyed an outstanding season as she set career bests at 60m, 100m and 200m in addition to her key role in the successful 4x100m Ukrainian relay team. Ryemyen’s improve-ment has been huge over the last 12 months as she finished seventh in the U23 category last year. Only one year later she executed a brilliant semi-fi-nal in Barcelona with a PB of 11.25 to make her first major final where Rye-myen finished a respectable fifth. In the relay, she ran the third leg and passed the baton to Bryzgina while leading to give herself a European gold medal on the day prior to her 23rd birthday.

Mariya Ryemyen (UKR)Born: 2.8.1987Height: —Weight: —

Club: Zaporozhye,U, DonetskPersonal Bests:60m:7.26(10), 100m: 11.25 (10) Season’s Best: 11.25 Barcelona 29.07.10

Yelizaveta Bryzhina anchored the Ukrainian team to their first ever wo-men’s 4x100m relay medal of any colour in the history of the cham-pionships. In addition, Ukraine’s winning time of 42.29 was a massive national record, also a world lea-ding performance and the fastest time at the Europeans since 1990. Two days before the relay team gold, the 20-year-old Bryzgina bag-ged the individual silver medal in the 200m in a career best of 22.44. Bryzhina is the daughter of Olga Vladykina, the 1988 Olympic 400 and 4x400 champion.

Yelizaveta Bryzhina (UKR)Born: 28.11.89Height: —Weight: —

Club: Lugano D

Personal Bests: 22.44 (2010)Season’s Best: 200m: 22.44 Barcelona 31.07.10

Nataliya Pohrebnyak is the cur-rent European U23 champion in the 100m, a feat she achieved in Kaunas last year. In addition, the 22-year-old is an accomplished 4x100m relay specialist who has re-presented Ukraine at the last four major championships at senior level after landing European silver while a junior in 2007. The Osaka worlds and the Beijing Olympics were not particularly lucky for the Ukrainian squad but they made huge pro-gress last year at the Berlin worlds to narrowly miss the final, and it fi-nally came together in Barcelona where Pohrebnyak ran an excellent homestretch and negotiated two superb changeovers with Olesya Povh and Mariya Ryemyen.

Nataliya Pohrebnyak (UKR)Born: 19.2.88 Height: 171 cmWeight: 62 kg

Club: Kharkiv,D

Personal Bests:60m:7.46(06), 100m: 11.28 (08)Season’s Best: 11.45 Yalta 27.05.10

4x100m

A world youth medallist seven years ago, Krivoshapka’s biggest success to date was the gold medal perfor-mance at the European indoors in Torino. In the world championships in Berlin she took bronze, but after a period of injury this year she ma-naged no better than fourth in the Russian championships. The lack of training showed up in Barcelona when, in the lead coming into the straight, she faded to third, but on the last day she ran a superb re-lay leg to lay the foundations for a crushing Russian win.

Tatyana Firova made history in Barcelona’s Olympic stadium as she led a Russian sweep of the medals in the women’s 400m for the first time ever at a European Athletics Championships.

Firova looked good for gold after the semi-finals but she had to fight hard to beat her team-mates, Kseniya Ustalova and Antonina Krivopshapka, in the home straight as the trio crossed the line in a blanket fi-nish leaving the rest of Europe in their wake.

The 2009 European under-23 champion in Kaunas moved smartly up to the senior level when she took the silver medal at the European championships in Barcelona with a lifetime best 49.92, an impressive improvement of 0.41, before adding gold in the relay. It has been a fine season for Ustalova who won the SPAR European Team Championships before going on to lift the Russian title. Ustalova took silver in the European junior championships three years ago and topped it off with gold in the relay.

Kseniya Ustalova (RUS)

Born: 14.01.88Height: —Weight: —

Club: Education Ministry

Personal Bests: 49.92 2010Season’s Best: 49.9230.07.10

Tatyana Firova (RUS)


Club: DynamoMoscow

Personal Bests: 49.89 (2010)Season’s Best: Season’s best: 48.89 Barcelona30.07.10

Antonina Krivoshapka (RUS) Born: 21.07.87 Height: —Weight: —

Club: Russian Army

Personal Bests: 49.29 2009Season’s Best: 50.10 Barcelona 30.07.10

4x400m

The 29-year-old proved simply uns-toppable on the homestretch as she powered across the line in the women’s 4X100m relay final in Bar-celona to deliver the gold medal for Ukraine ahead of France and Poland. She specialises in both 100 and 200m. After finishing 7th in the 200m at the 2006 European Athle-tics Championships in Göteborg, she failed to make it to the final at the worlds in Osaka in 2007. In the 100 metres she won the silver me-dal at the 2007 Summer Universiade and a bronze medal in the 4 x 400 metres relay.

Olena Chebanu (UKR)

Born: 04.01.1981Height: 170cmWeight: 60 kg

Club: Kharkiv D

Personal Bests: 11.42 (2006)Season’s Best: 11.54 Donetsk 1.07.10

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Reserve

Dobrynska was the surprise Olym-pic champion in Beijing and took silver in Barcelona with a personal best 6778 that included three per-sonal bests in the 200m, javelin and 800m as well as equalling her best in the high jump. Despite losing to Britain’s Jessica Ennis, the Ukrainian believes that by concentrating on her strengths, the shot and the jave-lin, she will be able to make up the deficit on the Briton come London 2012. She is coached by husband Dmitriy.

Natalya Dobrynska (UKR)Born: 29.05.82Height: 180 cmWeight: 72 kg

Club: Vinnitska KD

Personal Best: Heptathlon: 6778 (2010)Season's Best: 6778 Barcelona 31.07.10

Three times Cuban champion and twice Italian champion and record holder, it was Grenot who was to make the pace in the early stages of the 400m final in Barcelona. Up until the 250m mark it looked as though Grenot might cause an upset. Ente-ring the straight she was still on terms with the medallists, but in the end had to give best to the might of the Russian trio. She was rewarded with a season’s best 50.43, just 0.13 off her Italian record and the second fastest time of her career.

Libania Grenot (ITA)


Club: Fiamme Gialle

Personal Best: 50.30NR2009Season's Best: 50.43Barcelona 30.07.10

4x400m

European Records As of 24.08.10

MEN

100 m 9.86 OBIKWELU Francis POR 22.08.2004 Athens200 m 19.72 MENNEA Pietro ITA 12.09.1979 Mexico D.F.400m 44.33 SCHÖNLEBEThomas GDR 03.09.1987 Roma800 m 1:41.11 KIPKETER Wilson DEN 24.08.1997 Köln1000 m 2:12.18 COE Sebastian GBR 11.07.1981 Oslo1500m 3:28.95 CACHOFermin ESP 13.08.1997 Zürich1mile 3:46.32 CRAMSteve GBR 27.07.1985 Oslo2000m 4:51.39 CRAMSteve GBR 04.08.1985 Budapest3000m 7:26.62 MOURHITMohammed BEL 18.08.2000 Monaco5000 m 12:49.71 MOURHIT Mohammed BEL 25.08.2000 Bruxelles10000m 26:52.30 MOURHITMohammed BEL 03.09.1999 Bruxelles20000m 57:18.4 CASTRODionisio POR 31.03.1990 LaFlèche1 hour 20.944m HERMENS Jos NED 01.05.1976 PapendalHalf Marathon 59:52 RONCERO Fabian ESP 01.04.2001 Berlin25000m 1:13.57.6 FRANKEStephane GER 30.03.1999 Walnut30000m 1:31:30.4 ALDERJames GBR 05.09.1970 LondonMarathon 2:06:36 ZWIERZCHLEWSKIBenoit FRA 06.04.2003 Paris100 km 6:18.24 ARDEMAGNI Mario ITA 11.09.2004 Winschoten3000mSteeple 8:01.18 TAHRIBouabdellah FRA 18.08.2009 Berlin110mHurdles 12.91 JACKSONColin GBR 20.08.1993 Stuttgart400mHurdles 47.37 DIAGANAStephane FRA 05.07.1995 LausanneHighJump 2.42 SJÖBERGPatrik SWE 30.06.1987 StockholmPoleVault 6.14* BUBKASergey UKR 31.07.1994 SestrièreLong Jump 8.86 EMMIYAN Robert URS 22.05.1987 TsakhkadzorTriple Jump 18.29 * EDWARDS Jonathan GBR 07.08.1995 Göteborg

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ShotPut 23.06 TIMMERMANNUlf GDR 22.05.1988 ChaniaDiscus 74.08 * SCHULT Jürgen GDR 06.06.1986 NeubrandenburgHammer 86.74* SEDYKHYuriy URS 30.08.1986 StuttgartJavelin 98.48 * ZELEZNY Jan CZE 25.05.1996 JenaDecathlon 9026 * SEBRLE Roman CZE 26.05.2001 Götzis20000mRaceWalk 1:18:35.2 JOHANSSONStefan SWE 15.05.1992 Fana20 km Race Walk 1:17.16 * KANAYKIN Vladimir RUS 29.09.2007 Saransk2hoursRaceWalk 29.572m DAMILANOMaurizio ITA 03.10.1992 Cuneo30000mRaceWalk 2:01:44.1* DAMILANOMaurizio ITA 03.10.1992 Cuneo50000mRaceWalk 3:40:57.9* TOUTAINThierry FRA 29.09.1996 Héricourt50kmRaceWalk 3:34.14* NIZHEGORODOVDenis RUS 11.05.2008 Cheboksary4x100m 37.73 NationalTeam GBR 29.08.1999 Sevilla4x200m 1:21.10 NationalTeam ITA 29.09.1983 Cagliari4x400m 2:56.60 NationalTeam GBR 03.08.1996 Atlanta4x800m 7:03.89 NationalTeam GBR 30.08.1982 London4x1500m 14:38.8 NationalTeam FRG 17.08.1977 Köln

Ind(i)=IndoorPerformanceinaccordancewithIAAFrule260.6(a)

Pend(+)=PendingRatification

WR(*)=alsoWorldRecord


WOMEN

100m 10.73 ARRONChristine FRA 19.08.1998 Budapest200 m 21.71 KOCH Marita GDR 10.06.1979 Karl Marx Stadt 21.71 KOCH Marita GDR 21.07.1979 Potsdam 21.71 DRECHSLER Heike GDR 29.06.1986 Jena 21.71 DRECHSLER Heike GDR 29.08.1986 Stuttgart400 m 47.60 * KOCH Marita GDR 06.10.1985 Canberra800m 1:53.28* KRATOCHVILOVAJarmila TCH 26.07.1983 München1000m 2:28.98* MASTERKOVASvetlana RUS 23.08.1996 Bruxelles1500m 3:52.47 KAZANKINATatyana URS 13.08.1980 Zürich1 mile 4:12.56 * MASTERKOVA Svetlana RUS 14.08.1996 Zürich2000m 5:25.36* O’SULLIVANSonia IRL 08.07.1994 Edinburgh3000m 8:21.42 SZABOGabriela ROM 19.07.2002 Monaco5000m 14:23.75 SHOBUKHOVALiliya RUS 19.07.2008 Kazan10000m 29:56.34 ABEYLEGESSEElvan TUR 15.09.2008 Beijing10km 30:21* RADCLIFFEPaula GBR 23.02.2003 SanJuan,PUR15 km 46:59 KIPLAGAT Lornah NED 14.10.2007 Udine20000m 1:06:55.5 MOTARosa POR 14.05.1983 Lisboa20 km 1:02:57 * KIPLAGAT Lornah NED 14.10.2007 Udine1 hour 18.084m CRUCIATA Silvana ITA 04.05.1981 RomaHalf Marathon 1:06:25 * KIPLAGAT Lornah NED 14.10.2007 Udine25000 m 1:28:22.6 JAVORNIK Helena SLO 19.07.2007 Maribor25 km 1:22:47 RADCLIFFE Paula GBR 14.08.2005 Helsinki30000m 1:47:05.6 SZABOKarolina HUN 22.04.1988 Budapest30km 1:39:22 RADCLIFFEPaula GBR 14.08.2005 HelsinkiMarathon 2:15:25* RADCLIFFEPaula GBR 13.04.2003 London

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100km 7:10:32 ZHYRKOVATatyana RUS 11.09.2004 Winschoten3000mSteeple 8:58.81* SAMITOVA-GALKINAGulnara RUS 17.08.2008 Beijing100 m Hurdles 12.21 * DONKOVA Yordanka BUL 20.08.1988 Stara Zagora400mHurdles 52.34* PECHONKINAYuliya RUS 08.08.2003 TulaHighJump 2.09* KOSTADINOVAStefka BUL 30.08.1987 RomaPole Vault 5.06 * ISINBAYEVA Yelena RUS 28.08.2009 ZürichLong Jump 7.52 * CHISTYAKOVA Galina URS 11.06.1988 LeningradTriple Jump 15.50 * KRAVETS Inessa UKR 10.08.1995 GöteborgShotPut 22.63* LISOVSKAYANatalya URS 07.06.1987 MoskvaDiscus 76.80 * REINSCH Gabriele GDR 09.07.1988 NeubrandenburgHammer 78.30+* WLODARCZYKAnita POL 06.06.2010 BydgoszczJavelin 72.28* SPOTAKOVABarbara CZE 13.09.2008 StuttgartHeptathlon 7032 KLÜFTCarolina SWE 25.08.2007 Osaka Decathlon 8358* SKUJYTEAustra LTU 15.04.2005 Columbia,MO 3000mRaceWalk 11:40.33* STEFClaudia ROM 30.01.1999 Bucuresti10000mRaceWalk 41:56.23* RYASHKINANadezhda URS 24.07.1990 Seattle20000mRaceWalk 1:26:52.3* IVANOVAOlimpiada RUS 06.09.2001 Brisbane20 km Race Walk 1:25:41 * IVANOVA Olimpiada RUS 14.08.2005 Helsinki4x100m 41.37* NationalTeam GDR 06.10.1985 Canberra4x200 m 1:28.15 National Team GDR 09.08.1980 Jena4x400m 3:15.17 NationalTeam URS 01.10.1988 Seoul4x800 m 7:50.17 National Team URS 05.08.1984 Moskva Ind(i)=IndoorPerformanceinaccordancewithIAAFrule260.6(a)

Pend(+)=PendingRatification

WR(*)=alsoWorldRecord

Timetable

Day 1- Saturday, 4 September, 2010

17:00 HammerThrow Men17:10 Pole Vault Women17:20 Triple Jump Women17:30 400mHurdles Men17:50 400m Hurdles Women18:05 5000m Men18:15 DiscusThrow Women18:30 800m Women18:40 High Jump Men18:45 400m Women18:55 400m Men19:05 Long Jump Men19:10 100m Women19:20 100m Men19:30 ShotPut Men19:35 1500m Men19:40 JavelinThrow Women19:50 3000m Women20:10 4 x 100m Women20:25 4 x 100m Men

Day 2 - Sunday, 5 September, 2010

17:00 HammerThrow Women17:10 Pole Vault Men17:20 Triple Jump Men17:25 3000mSteeplechase Women17:45 3000mSteeplechase Men18:05 100m Hurdles Women18:10 DiscusThrow Men18:15 110m Hurdles Men18:30 1500m Women18:40 High Jump Women18:45 3000m Men19:00 Long Jump Women19:05 200m Women19:15 200m Men19:25 Shot Put Women19:30 5000m Women19:35 JavelinThrow Men20:00 800m Men20:10 4 x 400m Women20:25 4 x 400m Men

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Impressum

European AthleticsAvenue Louis-Ruchonnet 18CH-1003LausanneSwitzerland

Tel: +41213134350Fax: +41213134351Email: [email protected]

Editors: James Mulligan Aditya Kumar

Text: Michael Butcher MatthewBrown Steve Landells Emeterio Valiente Phil Minshull

Photos: Andy Heading Picture Alliance RFEA (Spanish athletics federation)

Statistics: Mirko Jalava

Design: Formas Agence de Publicité

Printing: Copyquick

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