European indoor champion Femke Bol was in sharp form on her season’s debut at the Meeting Metz Moselle Athlelor on Saturday (12), a World Indoor Tour Silver meeting, when she won the 400m in a world leading time.
Bol eased down the camber into the lead at the 200 metre-point in a moderate 24.38 but the Dutchwoman utilised her strength from her hurdles background on the second lap, holding her form brilliantly to cross the finish-line in a world lead of 50.72.
Her winning time also improved her meeting record of 50.81 and Bol also came within 0.09 of her national indoor record which she set at the European Indoor Championships in Torun last March when she won gold medals in both the 400m and 4x400m.
Bol will return to Torun in nine days’ time for the Copernicus Cup en route to the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Belgrade, Serbia from 18-20 March.
In the preceding races, Bol’s training partner and teammate Lieke Klaver won the first 400m in 52.49 from Belgium’s Camille Laus in 52.90 before Poland’s Natalia Kaczmarek continued her promising start to the season with a 51.58 season's debut in the second race.
Bol also came away with a lifetime best of 23.37 to win her 200m race although Klaver was marginally faster in the preceding race, coming away with a 23.27 clocking.
In an exciting all-French battle in the 60m hurdles, reigning European outdoor champion Pascal Martinot-Lagarde edged out his younger compatriot Wilhem Belocian, the reigning European indoor champion.
Martinot-Lagarde, a multiple European and world indoor medallist in the 60m hurdles, improved his European lead to 7.51 to pip Belocian by 0.01 with the rapidly improving European U23 champion Asier Martinez from Spain third in a lifetime best of 7.55.
Miltiadis Tentoglou from Greece dominated the long jump. All four of the Olympic champion's valid jumps would have won the competition and he was the only athlete to cross the eight metre-line, extending his lead in the sixth round to 8.22m to win by almost half-a-metre from Cuba’s Maykel Masso (7.80m) and JuVaughn Harrison from the United States (7.76m).
Full results here
Luckenkemper and Swiety-Ersetic in fast form in Dortmund
European 100m silver medallist Gina Luckenkemper might not be particularly renowned for her exploits over 60m but the 25-year-old was among the winners at the PSD Bank Indoor Meeting in Dortmund on Saturday (12), defeating many of his domestic rivals in the process.
Luckenkemper was fast out of the blocks and she held the lead all the way, stopping the clock at 7.22 for her fastest time in four years. Dutch teenager N'Ketia Seedo was second in 7.28. "I've probably never gotten out of the blocks so well. I even thought it was a false start because I'm usually never that far ahead at the start," said Luckenkemper.
Reigning European champion Justyna Swiety-Ersetic took a controlled gun-to-tape victory on her season's debut in the 400m in 52.10 to defeat Cuba's Olympic finalist Roxana Gomez by exactly half-a-second.
Multiple world and European indoor 400m champion Pavel Maslak from the Czech Republic laid down the marker in the first of two men's 400m races with a 47.33 clocking. His time was matched in the second race by Romanian youngster Sorin Mihai Dringo's whose time also corresponded to a lifetime best.
Joris Van Gool from the Netherlands won the men's 60m with 6.60 from Julian Wagner in 6.62 although the German did produce the fastest time of the day in the heats with 6.58.
But the highlight from an international standpoint was KC Lightfoot's 5.95m clearance in the pole vault. He then proceeded to raise the bar to a US indoor record height of 6.03m and had two particularly close attempts at the record height.
Full results here.
Lillefosse clears Norwegian pole vault record of 5.83m in Uppsala
Sweden won both the men's and women's contests at the Nordic Indoor Match in Uppsala on Saturday (12) but the best performance of the meeting came from Norway's 2018 European U18 champion Pal Haugen Lillefosse who reclaimed his national record with a 5.83m clearance.
In Magglingen, the Kambundji sisters posted fast times in the sprints. Older sister Mujinga clocked 7.16 in the 60m heats before improving to 7.14 in the final. Ditaji, the European U20 100m hurdles champion, broke the eight second-barrier for the first time with a Swiss U23 record of 7.98. European indoor champion Angelica Moser also continued her comeback from injury with a 4.60m clearance in the pole vault.
In Madrid on Saturday, Maria Perez continued her unbeaten start to the season in the 60m, improving her national record to 7.20. Her notable wins this year have included a victory at the first World Indoor Tour Gold meeting of the year in Karlsruhe and at the DNA Indoor Match in Glasgow where Spain won the title in the six-way match.
There was another notable national record in the Netherlands as Jessica Schilder became the first Dutch shot putter to break the 19 metre-line with 19.26m in Apeldoorn. Schilder moves to second on the 2021 world list behind European indoor champion Auriol Dongmo from Portugal with 19.61m.
At the Czech Indoor Combined Events Championships in Prague, Dorota Skrivanova made a big improvement with a lifetime best of 4560 points to win the pentathlon title. Jiri Sykora won the heptathlon title with 6020 points ahead of world U20 decathlon champion Frantisek Doubek with 5621 points.