Susanna Kallur in the Globe Arena in Stockholm (© Hasse Sjögren)
For the 8th straight year the Stockholm Globe Arena was sold out - 10,500 spectators - for the GE Galan – IAAF Indoor Permit meeting - and those that came to see new World 60m Hurdles record holder** Susanna Kallur perform her magic once more this winter were not disappointed.
Despite a somewhat sluggish start and despite not (as has been her habit) accelerating away from everybody else within the first few steps (Kallur didn't get the outright lead until after the second hurdle) she won by over one and a half metres. And the explanation for that sizeable winning margin certainly was not that her opponents had any major problems: Actually Josephine Onyia (7.91), Lacena Golding-Clarke (7.93) och Priscilla Lopes-Schliep (7.93) all improved their seasonal best marks.
Kallur’s winning time 7.74 lowered the arena record by 0.06 and missed her own World record by the same margin. But she did admit afterwards that she had begun to feel in her hamstrings the effect of the string of fast races. Thus she was now looking forward to giving her body some rest and easy training before Valencia. The national championships on Sunday in Malmö is Kallur's only remaining competition before the World Indoor Championships.
Holm flawless win
The men's High Jump had assembled five of the six jumpers having cleared 2.34m or more this winter but the competition didn't become as heated as expected. Andrey Silnov and Stefan Holm were the most impressive with distinct first time clearances all the way up to and including 2.30. That height was also mastered by Andrey Tereshin in 2nd and Kyriacos Ioannou in 3rd attempts while Linus Thörnblad and Ivan Uchov had to be content with 2.26 and 2.22 respectively.
At 2.33 Holm continued his flawless jumping while all the other three were eliminated and suddenly the competition was over. Closest of the other three to make 2.33 was Ionnaou (his second attempt), while Silnov suddenly had lost his impressive form from the earlier heights and failed markedly in all his three attempts.
With the competition won Holm had the bar raised to 2.37. His second attempt was reasonably close, he had the necessary height but was slightly off in timing the bar clearance. But as he won – a definite confidence booster ahead of Valencia – and as he became the outright No 2 jumper of all time in number of 2.30+ meets (119 and counting ....) Holm was still very content with his 11th appearance at GE Galan.
World season lead for Simagina
While the level of performance and competitive drama was slightly disappointing for the men's High Jump the women's Long Jump had both great marks and exciting competition: Four athletes combined to produce no less fifteen legal jumps at 6.73m or better and the positions changed continuously. Tatyana Kotova was leading after the first round with her 6.76, then in the 2nd round we had the string Kotova 6.78, Karin Mey 6.85 and Naide Gomes 6.86.
In round 4, Gomes improved to 6.88, was passed by 1 cm by Irina Simagina in round 5, regained the lead in the last round with 6.93 – only to lose it again to Simagina's 6.96! So the winner added 2 cm to her own WL mark while the next two set new national records and Kotova improved her best mark this winter. Both Simagina and Gomes must feel strengthned mentally by how well they competed in the final stages of the event.
Fastest junior ever
In the men's 1000m, it was just inexperience that prevented Sudanese teenager Abubaker Kaki from snatching the world record from legend Wilson Kipketer. Kaki let the pace slip a little when the pacesetter had concluded his work and actually was challenged by Kenyan Richard Kiplagat when the last lap began. But then Kaki stepped on the accelerator again and with a blistering last lap he went from three seconds behind the WR pace of Kipketer to just 0.81 at the finish: 2:15.77!
Kaki's laptimes 25.4 – 27.1 – 28.1 – 28.7 – 26.5 tells the story in a comprehensive way and with the experience gained tonight it is quite probable that his next attack – due already on Sunday in Gent – on the 1000m World indoor record (he already tonight became the fastest junior ever) will be successful for this extraordinary talent. His smooth low-knee-lift running action signals that the 1500m might become his best event in the future.
Mutola bows out at the top
If Kaki very much was "the new kid on the block" this evening middle distance colleague Maria Mutola was the opposite. She first ran in this meet in 1996 when she established a World Indoor record at 1000m and tonight she made her 8th and last appearance as an athlete in the Globe Arena. And Mutola bowed out at the top:
With a burst of speed at the final backstretch she passed leading Briton Jennifer Meadows just before the last bend and kept going to a decisive win in 1:59.82. This was Mutola's 6th victory (she also has two 2nd places) at the GE Galan by which she tied the "arena record" held by recently retired high jumper Kajsa Bergqvist. (The latter got a thunderous standing ovation when she was honoured by the organiser at a special ceremony during the meet.)
Bungei’s night but a faster 1:46 ’B’ race!
The men's 800m became somewhat disappointing as none of the supposed main characters followed the pacesetter John Litei, although he ran according to plan (51.1 at 400m). The eight contenders was by then 1.5 seconds behind. A 28.0 third lap didn't help matters and at the end it was positions that decided everything:
Wilfred Bungei went to the front at 600m and never looked back. Favourite Yuriy Borzakovskiy once more made the mistake of being too far back for too long of the race thereby putting himself at a such a disadvantage that he didn't manage to reach the leader before the finish line: So for the first time in their five encounters at GE Galan it was Bungei that came out on top (1:47.16 vs 1:47.22) even though Borzakovskiy once more was the fastest finisher of the two.
However, the fastest 800m time came in the ’B’ race two hours before the spectators had arrived for the main programme: Latvian Dmitrijs Milkevics followed his pacemaker through 51.5 halfway and then pushed on the last 300m on his own to win by five seconds in 1:46.09! A time that moved Milkevics up to the No 3 position on the 2008 World list missing Einars Tupuritis 12 years old national record by just 29 hundredths!
Jamal and Burka battle to the line
The women's 1500m became the expected duel between ex-Ethiopian Maryam Jamal and Ethiopian Gelete Burka but the plans for a superfast winning time got unstuck when the pacesetter was unable to keep the splits asked for. After an opening 61.7 it slowed to 66.9 and none of the two main contenders were prepared to take charge. The third 400m actually went by in 68.5 and by then the two had been joined by Russian Olesya Chumakova.
Jamal finally struck with one lap to go, dropped Chumakova and opened up an apparently decisive gap to Burka. But the latter hadn't given up and found a new gear to shrink the gap from some 7-8 meter to less than half a meter: Jamal won in 4:04.30 with Burka merely seven hundredths behind.
Comfortable victory for Lagat
The front group of the men's 3000m passed halfway in 3:47.1 and when the last pacesetter left at 2000m (5:04) steeplechase specialist Paul Kipsieli Koech took charge of the race followed by Osaka double World champion Bernard Lagat and Abraham Chebii. Favourite Lagat went to the front on the second to last lap but didn't put on the full finishing sprint until the very last lap. But a 28.0 closer was still enough to give him a comfortable 1.6 s winning margin over Koech.
Thanks to Kajsa Bergqvist the women's High Jump has consistently been one of the main attractions for the last decade of GE Galan. With Bergqvist a spectator in the stands a tight battle between Osaka's joint silver medallists Antonietta Di Martino and Anna Chicherova was expected. However, the Russian was not on form and went out already at 1.94m finishing 5th.
So despite this being her first meet of season Di Martino was in control all the way reaching 1.97 with only one miss (at 1.84) before closing with three attempts at 2.00. A first attempt clearance of 1.94 (her best so far this winter) netted Helsinki bronze medallist Emma Green the 2nd place ahead of the Russian duo Tatyana Kivimyagi and Svetlana Shkolina (both 1.94 on 2nd attempt).
A name for the future
After 5.61m all seven vaulters remained in the competition but the only one to make 5.71 on first attempt was none of the "famous" names. Russian 20-years old Leonid Kivalov is obviously a name to remember for the future. This evening he finally had to be content with 3rd place as both countryman Yevgeniy Lukyanenko and German Tim Lobinger cleared 5.81 on their last attempts. Of the six attempts at the would-be new World leading height of 5.86 the best attempts belonged to Lukyanenko.
Robles – 7.44 sec
Susanna Kallur's male counterpart as supremely dominant hurdler this winter Dayron Robles of Cuba had no problem adding another emphatic victory. With 7.44 he won by almost a quarter of a second and missed Colin Jackson's arena record by just 0.02. The statistical parallells between these two hurdle aces are striking: She has 8 of the 9 fastest times so far this winter while he has 7 of the 8 fastest.
Wissman helps to send them home happy
The first event on the main programme was the 1000m race where super talent Abubaker Kaki immediately put the spectators into the right mood and at the end of the programme the final half hour sent the 10,000+ home in the dark Stockholm night with smiles on their faces: First Stefan Holm sealed the High Jump victory and a few minutes later Johan Wissman outran and outsmarted Chris Brown and Tyler Christopher in the 400m.
Brown in lane 2 had made up the stagger on the Swede within 50m but Wissman didn't feel intimidated. Instead he moved into second gear and although Brown was leading at the break line Wissman has moving faster and did get the lead out on the second lap. A lead he doggedly defended to the finish line although Brown did launch a strong finish to reach the line a mere hundredth behind (46.30 vs 46.31).
Off his easy looking 45.80 in Birmingham Canadian Christopher was the favourite but he ran too slow between 100m and 180m and actually was last (4th) at the bell. In reality he then had already lost the race because he was too far away from the lead both physically and mentally. Christopher did run faster than Wissman and Brown for the final half lap but it was too little too late to really challenging them.
And then, as said, Susanna Kallur provided the perfect finale to a great evening of athletics. Perhaps just as impressive as her technique is her ability to handle all the current hysteric interest and expectations from the Swedish media and Swedish public. An illustration of the current Susanna-hype: At the press conference on Wednesday the requests for exclusive interviews with her were so many that a strict time cap of 5 minutes had to be imposed. Then the next day Susanna Kallur runs 7.74 – a time only two other athletes ever have surpassed.
Klüft injured
The only sad note of the evening was that Carolina Klüft who was scheduled to compete in the 60m Hurdles and the Long Jump had to scratch after feeling a slight pain in her hamstring while warming up. The severity of the injury is still unknown, but Klüft herself has not yet given up the hope of being fit to compete in Valencia.
Lennart Julin for the IAAF
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**NB World indoor record subject to the usual ratification procedures
