News29 Jul 2008


Rybakov defeats Holm in Karlstad

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Yaroslav Rybakov competes in Karlstad, Sweden, winning with 2.33m (© Hasse Sjögren)

The featured event of the "Karlstad Grand Prix" (formerly "Götagalan") – the 5th and last meet in the 2008 edition of the "Folksam Grand Prix" circuit in Sweden - was the men's High Jump for the very obvious reason that it would be the final competition on home turf for local hero Stefan Holm, who at the beginning of this year announced that 2008 would be his last year as an athlete.

Of course the idea was that Stefan would win the event – and hopefully in the process improve his arena record of 2.32m. There was indeed a new Tingvalla arena record of 2.33 established – but not by Holm. After being the only jumper with a clean sheet of clearances up to and including 2.27 he seemed to run out of energy at 2.30 and none of his three attempts was really close to succeed.

Russia's Yaroslav Rybakov - the only male high jumper with a championship record in recent years that could stand any comparison with Holm's - on the other hand began by missing the first attempt at his opening height 2.20 but then had four straight clearances including 2.30. The last one sealed the victory but Rybakov went on to grab the arena record with a third time clearance of 2.33 – equalling his seasonal best – and to have at least one decent try at the would-be PB height of 2.36.

Holm afterwards couldn't find any logical reason for his sub-par performance: “My warm-up was really good as I made 2.10 with scissors and a couple of easy 2.20's with the flop. However, when the competition proper started I felt drained of all energy in my legs. It was not a technical problem, I simply didn't have the power to get any lift-off. I don't have any explanation, it is just one of those things that happens.”

But it should be remembered that it still took a jumper of Rybakov's extraordinary calibre to beat Holm on this odd off-day. The others – including Nieto, Dmitrik and World Junior champion Bondarenko – still lost.

Klüft wins in variable wind conditions

Carolina Klüft, this day in the Triple Jump,  was the other poster athlete of the meet and although the technique still was quite inconsistent she did manage to pull out a winning final attempt of 14.10 (into 1.3 mps) to defeat Russia's Jekaterina Kayukova (recently 14.59) by a healthy margin of almost four decimetres.

When looking at the somewhat mediocre distances it should be noted that the wind played a strange game with the triple jumpers: For one and a half round they had a nice and fairly steady 1.5 mps breeze behind them and then it suddenly switched to a strong headwind averaging 3 mps even though the jumpers did their best to try to wait for a lull moment.

This complete turnaround of the wind also hit the sprinters hard. It began with picture perfect conditions which Nigeria's Peter Emelieze used to lower his 100m PB to 10.26 in winning the 100m. But his female colleagues one hour later were met by a "wall" of –4.6 mps! Diminutive Alexis Joyce (11.09 PB earlier this year) blasted out of the blocks to a clear lead but the succumbed to the wind and ended up 4th as the power of Canadian Toyin Olupona proved to be the winning edge in those conditions.

The wind switch also affected the throwers in the most unfavourable way: The women's Discus took place with a disadvantageous following wind while the men's Javelin experienced a similarly disadvantageous headwind! So Anna Söderberg's winning 57.11m should be viewed with the knowledge that three 59m-throwers from earlier this year now had to be content with marks in the 52-54m bracket. Similarly Eriks Rags's 79.81m and Magnus Arvidsson's 78.51 have intrinsic values considerably higher than the nominal results.

For the men's Shot Put and the women's Hammer Throw the wind was not any factor and both Estonia's Taavi Peetre and Poland's Malgorzata Zadura produced consistent throwing on the level they have shown previously this summer. Their winning distances this evening were 19.80m and 68.31m respectively.

Shapayeva makes impressive two lap performance

On the track the most impressive performance was provided by Russia's Maria Shapayeva in the 800m as she ran a negatively split (i.e. faster second lap) 2:00.44 winning by over three seconds. In the men's 2-lap event USA's Duane Solomon was rewarded for being the only runner daring to follow the pacemaker on the first lap. Although Solomon tired visibly in the finishing straight he did hold on to the win: 1:46.16 vs 1:46.55 for the fast finishing Justus Koech of Kenya.

Having a really good evening in Karlstad's 30+ degrees heat was the Bahamas’ Micheal Mathieu who first won the 200m B-final in 20.62w in the afternoon programme (the A-race was also won in 20.62, but into a headwind) and who then came back in the main programme to dominate the 400m by starting fast and then fending off the final challenge from Botswana's Isaac Makwala to win in 45.73.

Both high hurdles races turned out to be intense duels: In the women's race Yvette Lewis and Olena Krasovska ran stride-by-stride for most of the way with Lewis edging away in the closing stages. In the men's race Sweden's Robert Kronberg took the initiative with a strong acceleration and how ever hard USA's Joel Brown tried he still didn't manage to produce a successful challenge for the first place.

Noteworthy wins in the 400m Hurdles were scored by Sudan's Muna Jabir (56.25 – won by almost two seconds from Ukraine's World Juniors finalist Hanna Titimets) and by South Africa's Okkert Cilliers (50.21 – ahead of USA's Brian Derby).

Lennart Julin for the IAAF

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