Christophe Lemaitre of France in the men's 200m first round (© Getty Images)
Montgeron, FranceThe 25th “Meeting International d’Athlétisme Montgeron-Essonne” held on Sunday (10) on the Stade de Coubertin, opened the French National Circuit. The fastest men and women of the country were called for the first 4x100m relay competition, an early test for an ambitious squad aiming to renew with a tradition of global success in Berlin at the IAAF World Championships (15-23 August).
As an exordium, Christophe Lemaître, World Junior champion at 200m last year, was the fastest overall during the individual 100m heats with an impressive 10.36 into a 1.1 wind, winning by a significant margin over faster starter Peter Emelieze (NGR), 10.57. Only 18 years old, Lemaître showed that in better weather conditions, he is able to break his 10.26 personal best set last year and matched a couple of weeks ago.
National record holder (9.99) and member of the 4x100m World championships winning team in 2005, Ronald Pognon, just coming back from Doha where he ran 10.21 on Friday, only ran the relay. Martial Mbandjock, 10.06 in 2008 and timed in 10.26 this season, was the only missing as he is currently training in the USA.
Vincent Clarico, 4x100m relay coach, set up five homogenous teams: “Some of the athletes have no performances yet as the season begins, so the purpose of this first meeting was to work the team as a whole and test some exchanges,” explained Clarico.
“Today, we did not want to pick the best individuals in the same team; our objective was to validate the technical work done this winter.”
France “Red” (Bascou, Adalbert, Abidogouin, Nivollet) ran 40.34, from France “White” (Ngom Priso, Pognon, De Lepine, Pessonneaux) in 40.45 and France “Blue” (Lesourd, Lemaître, Reynaert, Bonnet) in 40.85.
Coach Clario noted: “We saw that some moved really fast in the transmission zones, while some others lost focus because of the number of participants. We need to fix it in making the suits’ colours more visible in order to avoid confusions. The determinant factor for the relay is the individual speed, and the addition of the individual performances for the men is very good.”
The National record was set in 1990 by Morinière, Sangouma, Trouabal and Marie-Rose in 37.79, a World record at that time.
The female squad was unlucky as the starter was not paying attention to all the relay members. As a result, the girls running the second leg were still chatting with the coaching staff as the gun shoot. In the absence of two of the 4x100m World champions in 2003, Christine Arron (not ready to compete) and Muriel Hurtis (recovering from injury), France “Blue” (Soumare, Distel, Jacques-Sébastien, Gaydu) ran 45.33 during an erratic race.
Eslewhere, Artsiom Zaitsau (BLR) set a personal best at High Jump with 2.28, Mihkel Kukk (EST) threw the Javelin at 77.11 and Katerina Karsak (UKR) took the Discus Throw with 61.77 from Mélina Robert-Michon (60.26). Sandra Gomis was the fastest at 100m hurdles (13.13, w-0.2).
Pierre-Jean Vazel for the IAAF
