Women’s heptathlon final
Steven Downes for IAAF
20 October 2000 – Carolina Kluft duly won the heptathlon gold medal here on Saturday, setting the best mark of the year for a junior, 6056 points.
With three strong events on the second day – 6.08 metres in the long jump, 42.00 metres in the javelin, and 2min 18.77sec for 800 metres – the
17-year-old broke her own Swedish junior record, and even came with 27 points of her national senior record.
The silver medal was won by Lidiya Bashlykova, from Russia, with 5898, and Finland’s Sanna Saarman won the battle for bronze with 5707, her better 800m run seeing her overhaul the seven-point advantage held by Barbora Spotakova, after six of the seven events (Spotakova’s final tally was 5689), with Jessica Zelinka setting a Canadian junior record in fifth, just a single point behind the Czech.
To the delight of the partisan Chilean crowd, Valeria Steffens – who eventually finished 15th – established her own national junior record with 5080.
