News25 Jul 2003


Ionescu astounding on First Day of Euro-Juniors

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Marius Ionescu celebrates his victory (© EAA)

Romania’s women have a long tradition of providing championship distance runners but it was the turn of their men in the opening day of the European Junior Championships on Thursday, as Marius Ionescu took more than one minute from his personal best to win 10,000m gold.

Pre-event favourite Yevgeniy Rybakov led for much of the first half of the race but with seven laps to go, and the race entering its crucial final phase, the Russian European junior cross country champion, stepped on to the in-field from the lead group and out of the race.

This left four realistic medal contenders with Rybakov’s team-mate Alexey Reunkov in front tracked closely by Alejandro Martinez of Spain, Mohammed Bashir of Denmark and Ionescu lurking with intent in fourth.

Reunkov surged with 1000m to go and the pressure proved too much for Martinez, who quickly dropped out of medal contention.

With 300m remaining Bashir cut loose to bust past Reunkov and Ionescu was taken by surprise. Indeed, the Romanian appeared out of the scrap for gold, trailing Bashir by ten metres with 200m to go. But somehow he kept his composure too and launched a devastating kick and with 90m left hit the front to catch the leader and win in 29:40.41. The 18-year-old’s previous personal best had stood at 30:52.46, a truly astonishing progression.

Reunkov won silver in 29:40.80 with Denmark’s only entrant in the European Junior Championship, Somalian-born Mohammad Bashir, winning bronze in a personal best of 29:42.42.

A stunned Ionescu said: “Gold was a big surprise for me, but before the race I thought about the medal. In the beginning of the last lap I did not feel well, but then I got more power from somewhere. To run so much better than my previous PB surprises me a lot.”

Ionescu, who is studying at Craiova University in the autumn, will now attempt to win the 5000m in Sunday’s final.

In the only other event in which medals were decided on day one, Russia maintained their recent dominance of the women’s walk to claim an emphatic one-two led  by Irina Petrova, who covered the 10,000m distance in 47:12.79.

Petrova, who had tracked compatriot Anna Bragina for much of the second half of the race, struck for home with 250m remaining to clinch gold. Bragina, who had gone into the championship with the marginally quicker time of the two Russians had to settled for silver in 47:17.56 with Portugal’s Ana Cabecinha winning bronze medal in 47:36.15.

It was Russia's third successive European Junior walks gold and the first one-two in a women’s walk event at the championships since Spain picked up gold and silver in the 5000m event in 1985.

Petrova said of her win: “I didn’t work together with Anna Bragina, even though we were first and second. We come from different parts of Russia and don’t even train together. I came here to win.”

After a topsy-turvy first day in the men’s decathlon, Tim Golomoski of Germany holds the narrowest possible lead of just one point with 3938 from Sweden’s Nicklas Wiberg.

The German, who started the event ranked European no 1, endured a mixed first day, which included a solid shot put of 14.20 and excellent 400m (50.46) but a disappointing high jump of 1.96m.

But it is far from a two-horse race as just 73pts separate the first six and Latvia’s Janis Skrastins (3839), Belarus’s Aleksandr Korzun (3829), Poland’s Robert Gindera (3870) and Russia’s Aleksey Sysoyev (3865) will all fancy their chances.

A threadbare programme on the first day in the Tampere Stadium saw many planned heats and qualifying competitions disappointingly cancelled from the schedule due to lack of entrants.

But in the limited track action which took place outside of the two finals the most impressive performance came from Britain’s Charlotte Moore, who won heat one of the 800m in 2:02.49. Moore’s path to gold was eased, when the fastest women in Europe this year, Najla Jaber of Holland, took a tumble on the back straight of the final lap in heat three and crashed out of the championships.
 
In the women’s 100m hurdles German Sophie Krauel, who is bidding for a 100m hurdles/long jump double recovered from a poor start to win her heat in 13.54 to be fastest qualifier for tomorrow night’s final.

In the field all the big names breezed through qualification. In the men’s high jump. World indoor finalist Jaroslav Baba of the Czech Republic – a 2.32m jumper - was one of nine men, who did enough to qualify with 2.17m.

In the women’s hammer, favourite and European no 1 Maryia Smoliachkova of Belarus was the most impressive qualifier with 63.03m and she starts favourite for Saturday’s final.

In the men’s shot they were no real surprises as Sweden’s European no1 ranked Magnus Lohse eased through with a best of 19.56m.

Germany’s Floe Kuhnert, one of four world junior champions competing in Tampere, was the best qualifier in the women’s pole vault with 3.95m.

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