Dina Asher-Smith preserved her win streak in the 60m at the Belgrade Indoor Meeting, a World Athletics Indoor Tour Silver meeting, on Wednesday (15) evening.
Asher-Smith breezed to a 7.12 clocking in the 60m heats but any aspirations of improving on this mark, and maybe even challenging her recently set British record of 7.04 in the final, were dampened by two false starts and a faulty start.
On the fourth attempt, Asher-Smith’s experience and ability shone through as she took a routine victory in 7.13 ahead of Cyprus’ Olivia Fotopoulou (7.27) and 19-year-old Polyniki Emmanouilidou from Greece (7.30).
Despite the disruption, both the second and third-placers came away from the Serbian capital with lifetime bests on the road to the Istanbul 2023 European Athletics Indoor Championships from 2-5 March.
Asher-Smith is unlikely to compete in Istanbul next month but the women’s sprint is still expected to be one of the track highlights with Switzerland’s Mujinga Kambundji, Ewa Swoboda from Poland and Great Britain’s Daryll Neita all committed to the championships.
There was also a dramatic home victory for Elzan Bibic in an eventful 1500m. With Albania’s David Nikolli miscounting the laps and stopping with one lap to go, the multiple Serbian record-holder capitalised on this mistake, kicking to an unopposed victory in 3:39.16.
In the first of two 1500m races, Yervand Mkrtchyan took the victory in an outright Armenian record of 3:40.89 ahead of Hungarians Istvan Palkovits (3:40.89) and Istvan Szogi (3:42.93).
Other track highlights included Hungary’s Greta Kerekes winning the women’s 60m hurdles in 8.07 and Switzerland’s Rachel Pellaud moving up from the 400m to win the 800m in a lifetime best of 2:03.12.
Gardasevic takes the long jump plaudits; Fabbri reaches out to 21.53m in the shot put
Reigning world indoor champion Ivana Vuleta opted to miss this meeting but there was still a Serbian victory in the women’s long jump.
Former European U20 champion Milica Gardasevic produced one of the performances of the meeting, bounding out to an equal indoor lifetime best of 6.69m for a clear-cut victory ahead of Portugal’s Evelise Veiga with 6.40m.
Having already equalled her indoor lifetime best, Gardasevic had a sixth round jump which looked like it would have challenged her outright lifetime best of 6.83m had it not been credited as a narrow no-jump.
In the men’s long jump, the multi-talented 18-year-old Bulgarian Bozhidar Saraboyukov took one of the biggest wins of his developing career.
Saraboyukov, who won silver at the World Athletics U20 Championships in the high jump last summer, won the long jump with his third round effort of 7.82m to defeat former European indoor bronze medallist and home favourite Strahinja Jovancevic by four centimetres.
Part of an excellent triumvirate of Italian men’s shot putters, Leonardo Fabbri continued his excellent start to the indoor season with a significant victory in Belgrade.
Fabbri set the standard in the third round with 21.53m which proved enough to withstand the challenge of reigning European outdoor champion Filip Mihaljevic who improved to 21.45m in the fifth round.
The top six athletes all broke the 20 metre-barrier with European silver medallist Armin Sinancevic fourth on home soil with 20.81m to finish fourth.
Steven Mills for European Athletics