Kajsa Bergqvist - up and away to 2m in Sollentuna (© Hasse Sjögren)
Stockholm, SwedenThe 2005 edition of the "Sollentuna Grand Prix" meet attracted three times as many spectators as last year and it was not hard to find the reason: Kajsa Bergqvist! Born and raised just a stone's throw from the arena, Bergqvist was actually competing on her "true" home turf for the very first time since 1996.
Brilliant jumping
And no one of the 3.000+ spectators left "Sollentunavallen" disappointed as Bergqvist had a flawless record up to and including 2.00 and as she also was tantalisingly close in her third attempt at 2.02, which would have constituted a new World leading mark for 2005. This brilliant jumping came despite a somewhat chilly and windy evening when the current No 2 on the 2005 World List (1.98) Tatyana Kivimyagi had to be content with 1.93.
It was Bergqvist 's 33rd meet at 2 metres or better in her career but perhaps even more remarkable is that she now has made it 3-out-of-3 this year in her comeback after the dramatic and traumatic Achilles rupture in mid-July last summer. And this a year when most other top jumpers so far seem to have got stuck at the 1.90-1.95 level.
Kajsa, who is adamant that she has not yet got back to full speed instead jumping mostly on strength, plans four competitions in July – Patras, Zagreb, Madrid and DN Galan Stockholm – in her build-up towards the 10th IAAF World Championships in Athletics, Helsinki, Finland (6-14 August).
Klüft is satisfied with dress rehearsal
The press conference the day before the meeting in this northwestern suburb of Stockholm featured an all-female cast of athletes - Kajsa, Carolina Klüft and Susanna and Jenny Kallur - and the meet also turned out to be very much a "Ladies night".
Carolina Klüft tuned up for the European Cup Heptathlon the upcoming weekend by doing the Shot Put and the Hurdles and was quite satisfied with the outcome. In the Shot, she reached 14.15 and had a narrow foul that was significantly longer and even more important was that she felt nothing of the arm injury that had hampered her in Götzis last month.
In the 100m Hurdles, her 13.25, just a tenth from her PB despite a headwind, and running down specialist Nadine Faustin, was just the kind of outcome that gave Klüft a positive feedback for the heptathlon on Saturday-Sunday. That she was "just" third didn't bother her at all, as she only lost to her (part-time) training partners Susanna and Jenny Kallur.
Emphatic victory for Susanna Kallur
Susanna just ran away from everyone and won convincingly by a good two metres in 12.73, her third best time ever despite a noticeable headwind (-0.9), and looks set for a major improvement on her 12.65 PB whenever she gets into a race with top competition and really good weather conditions. Hopefully all this will happen on Friday when she competes at the TDK Golden League meet in Paris.
Dibaba sisters – top-10 all-time for 10,000m
Even though the Swedish "Golden Girls" certainly did deliver according to the expectations of the crowd it was a couple of far-away guests that provided the top marks statistically: The Dibaba sisters – Tirunesh and Ejagayehu – who had travelled all the way from Ethiopia to Sollentuna are now No 9 and No 11 respectively on the women’s 10,000m all-time list.
However, if the weather hadn't turned really cold and even rainy in addition to the wind they probably would have ended up considerably higher on that list. The goal was sub-30 and for the first third of the race they were perfectly on schedule as Kenyan Naomi Mugo provided seven steady 72-laps, and as Tirunesh kept that pace to record kilometres of 3:00.8 – 3:00.2 – 2:59.6.
But then the conditions began to take their toll and when Ejagayehu took over, the pace started to drop: 3:02.4 and 3:05.4. Tirunesh went back into the lead and picked it up again - 3:00.7 – but she didn't have the strength to continue to push it all the way letting Ejagayehu take over for some laps when the pace immediately fell off. Kilometres No 7-9 were completed in 3:03.6 – 3:02.4 – 3:08.9 and all hopes for sub-30 were gone.
Sub-30 time was on, had it not been for the weather
But when the bell rang Tirunesh still managed to turn on a strong finish (64.4 last lap) and completed her first ever 10,000m race on the track in 30:15.67 (last kilometre in 2:51.7). Also Ejagayehu managed to find some energy reserves and with 30:18.39 lowered her PB from the Athens Olympics by over six seconds.
These quick finishes clearly proved that the sub-30 ambitions almost certainly would have been realised by the Dibaba sisters if the weather just would have been a little bit more co-operative.
On this "Ladies Night" it was also appropriate that the two new Swedish athletes making the Helsinki standards were Pole Vaulter Kirsten Belin who cleared the A-limit 4.45 and 400m Hurdler Louise Gundert who achieved the B-limit by improving by almost a second to 56.20.
A few men too!
But it still wasn't a "women only" meet and among the men the 400m race stood out. Briton Tim Benjamin went out fast and still managed to fight off a strong challenge in the finishing straight from Congolese Gary Kikaya to win in 45.11 vs 45.32 – truly excellent times considering the blustry wind.
Also worth much more than what the plain numbers indicate: Robert Kronberg's 13.60 in the Hurdles. Just like in the European Cup the previous weekend Kronberg in the actual man-to-man race situation left runners, who according to the year lists appeared to be on-par, two-three metres behind.
Great competitive strength was also demonstrated by Danish Long Jumper Morten Jensen. With just one jump remaining Jensen was in third place 18 cm behind the leader Tomasz Mateusiak of Poland. The Dane, fresh from a couple of recent 8+ competitions dug deep and came up with a 7.98 which brought him the win with over a quarter of metre!
But still, to the spectators this evening belonged to Kajsa Bergqvist who perfectly handled the high expectations of family, friends and fans when she returned to compete on the arena where it all began some 16 years ago and where she since then has done thousandths and thousandths of training jumps.
Lennart Julin for the IAAF
