Report12 Mar 2010


EVENT REPORT - WOMEN's Long Jump Qualification

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Naide Gomes of Portugal during the Long Jump qualifications (© Getty Images)

Producing the two farthest leaps of the qualifying round, Naide Gomes indicated that she arrived in Doha fully prepared to defend her Long Jump title.

The Portuguese champion opened with a 6.57m leap – a distance which would have sufficed as the morning’s longest – and added a 6.61m effort in the third round, the closest to the automatic qualifying standard of 6.65m, which was otherwise never threatened. All things considered, not a bad outing for Gomes who only resumed training in December.

"It was a strange qualifying," said Gomes, who also won the World indoor title in the Pentathlon in 2004. "We only decided to come to Doha in the past three weeks and I came to retain my world indoor title. I’m sure the other girls will make the task difficult."

Among them will be Darya Klishina. The rising Russian star used all three of her jumps and produced the most consistent series of the morning  – after Gomes – to advance to tomorrow afternoon’s final as the No. 2 qualifier. Opening with her best of 6.52m, she followed up with nearly identical 6.47m and 6.46m leaps. But she wasn’t particularly pleased.

“I don’t know what was happening in the long jump sector,” she said. “The girls did not jump well and everybody was focusing on the last attempt.”

A former World Youth champion in the event, Klishina took the European junior title last year and still competing as a junior this year, continues to improve. Her best of 6.87m this season, the second farthest in the world, is just one centimetre shy of of the World junior indoor best of 6.88 set by legendary Heike Drechsler in 1983 – eight years before Klishina was born.

Should the teenager, at 19 years and 56 days old manage an upset, she’d become the youngest-ever World indoor champion in an individual event.

6.52m was also the best reigning outdoor champion Brittney Reese could muster in a series in which she also produced a pair of fouls. A much better result should be expected by the 23-year-old, who produced the season’s 6.89m world leader at altitude at the US championships.

“It was rough,” said Reese, by far the dominant long jumper in 2009. “I had two scratches that I knew were over the automatic qualifier.” She too was expecting better results to emerge from the qualifying round.

“The track is kind of fast, so I was shocked to see that one got an automatic qualifer.”

Other podium contenders to emerge this morning were Yuliya Tarasova of Uzbekistan, the Asian champion in the Heptathlon, who reached 6.51m, the same distance managed by Ukrainian champion Viktoriya Rybalko. European indoor champion Ksenija Balta was content with her 6.50m best from the second round and also moved on.

Filling out the final will be Keila Costa of Brazil and Ana Nazarova of Russia, who reached 6.48m and 6.46m, respectively. Nazarova, the European Under-23 champion three years ago, beat Klishina at the Russian indoor championships last month.

Bob Ramsak for the IAAF
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