Naide Gomes gained another second place, her third of the day, this time in the long jump, but going into tonight’s final 800-metre run, the Portuguese champion’s 6.42-metre leap might prove to be the most significant in the pentathlon at these 10th IAAF World Indoor Championships.
Karin Ruckstahl, the Dutchwoman who some eight hours earlier had won the day’s first event, the 60m hurdles, showed again how her sprinting speed is in good order when, in her third and final attempt, it helped her to jump 6.57m, an improvement of 24cm on her lifetime best, and good enough for 1030pts, to drag her right back into medal contention with a tally of 3815pts after the penultimate event.
Gomes, with a four-event score of 3958, had managed to edge a little further ahead of Ukraine’s Nataliya Dobrynska, whose personal best 6.43m long jump nonetheless keeps her firmly in medal contention.
In the bronze medal position going into the final event is Lithuania’s Austra Skujyte, whose 6.38m effort brought her tally to 3859, 37pts behind the Ukrainian.
By virtue of the entries for the championships, Budapest was assured of crowning a new world indoor pentathlon champion before the competition began on Friday morning. Yet with none of the top four being noted for a particularly quick 800m performance, the eventual outcome remains wide open for whoever is strong enough and tough enough to grasp the opportunity.
