World champion Valerie Vili, who put 20.13m outdoors in Waitakere (NZL) on 19 Feb this year, continued her fine form with a 19.72m Area indoor record with her first and, of course only attempt as the automatic qualification for tomorrow’s final was 18.45m. Vili’s performance bettered the 18.22m record she produced at the 2004 edition of these championships.
2005 World outdoor champion Nadzeya Ostapchuk of Belarus, who was sixth at these championships in 2006 and is the world indoor season leader (20.35m), and will most likely be the New Zealander’s closest rival for the gold on Sunday, needed two puts to make the automatic mark, with 18.46m, her best.
Reconfirming their season’s form were Germany’s Christina Schwanitz and Russia’s Anna Omarova, who were the next best after Vili today with 18.97m and 18.58m automatics. The German (19.68m – 29 Feb) and Russian (19.09m – 10 Feb) stand second and third in this season’s world indoor lists too.
Meiju Li of China, who was sixth in Osaka last summer, was the fourth best of five automatic qualifiers with 18.55 but the Chinese team will have been disappointed to have lost Ling Li, a non-qualifier with 17.76. Ling Li has a best this year of 18.77m.
An upset also occurred to the Italian camp with the elimination of Assunta Legnante, the European Indoor champion, though they still have another big hope in Chaira Rosa, 18.38m, through to the final.
Trinidad’s Cleopatra Borel-Brown (18.34m) and Misleydis Gonzales of Cuba (18.32m) will make up the rest of the final.
Russia’s Anna Avdeyeva, second at the Russian champs with 18.22m, could only manage 17.79m today and will not see any more action here in Valencia.
Chris Turner for the IAAF
