The European Athletics Championships - Day 1

On the other hand, as is the case of certain field events and jumps, and at the longer distanced competition, an entry can be manageable enough to go to a straight final, or with just a sem-final as a prelude.

One such contest is the race walk and it is at this event, where traditionally the first medal goes. It is certainly a tradition for Russia to have a podium presence too, so it perhaps was no surprise when 19 year old Stanislav Emelyanov, for the first time among the seniors, to grab the original medal in the form of a crossed ribbon.

The Italians seem to be determined not to be left out again from the medal list, as their ‘dry’ World Championships in Berlin proved to be. In fact it was Alex Schawzer, the pre-race favourite, who garnered the silver and Joao Viera of Portugal repeated the third place he gained in Goteburg two years ago.

The biggest disappointment for the locals was the ninth place of their lead walker and certainly one of their hopefuls, Juan Molina, who on the strength of the past two editions, when he won consecutive titles, was a certainty to at least gain one of the three medals. Back at the Olympic Stadium, the Hammer Throw saw the Slovak Charfreitag winning his group and top place for the final with a best throw of 77.70metres, ahead of the Hungarian Pars who was so prominent in Malta when in the year 2003 the Winter Throwing Challenge drew these behemoths to our shores.

The preliminaries for the Shot Put Women were the first events of the day, which later on in the day saw the Belorussians emerging as the best in Europe with three athletes in the first four. To spoil their complete podium colours was the Russian Anna Avdeyeva who had a season’s best of 19.39metres to finish third after Nadzeya Ostapchuk (20.48 metres) and Natalia Mikhnevich with a 19.53 throw. Among the other qualifying events the 400m for men, the 400m hurdles women and the long jump and discus for women featured in the morning session.

Of these our special interest was Rebecca Camilleri competing in the second group. Camilleri put on a valiant challenge and her second try, at 5.93 metres was her best jump, in a competition where the mark to beat for a sure place in the final was 6.65 metres. Rebecca is the current holder of the National Record with a jump of 6.22 metres, so the fact that even if she again attained this mark it would have still kept her away from the final must have been a heavy burden to carry.

Meantime, the evening session intoduced the 100m heats, with Mario Bonello having to suffer, like others in the same third heat, a false start that had him have a slow start when the event went off again minus the Gibraltarian. Bonello finished in a time of 11.09 seconds in a heat won by the reigning European champion Francis Obikwelu.

However it was the Frenchman Christophe Lemaitre who had the best time of all with his 10.19 second dash. Other events that were closely fought were the javelin and the 800m for women, which reserved a few surprises, excluding the elimination of Elisa Cusma, more from chance than because of anything else, as she was in the fastest heat.

In the High Jump men the favourite Ivan Ukhov booked his nplace in the final, as did Viktor Kuznetsov and the Frenchman Tamgho, whose best jump of 17.37m in the Triple Jump was the best of the day. The third event of the first day to earn medals was the final of the 10000metres in which no less than 24 athletes fought it out over the 25 laps.

Unusual to witness was the presence of few men of a darker complexion, except for Mohammed Farah of Great Britain and some others representing their country France. Finally the contest went to two British athletes with Farah shrugging off the challenge of the Spaniard Lamdassem in the last lap after having fought out a twosome battle over the last kilometre. It was so hard on the Spaniard that he was also overtaken by Thomson for silver and Daniele Meucci, the Italian adding another medal for his country Italy