1st February 2013 12:06
Two years ago in Paris, Germany's Christina Schwanitz won silver in the shot put at the European Athletics Indoor Championships and taking that small step to the next level of the podium might not be far away.
Dresden-born Schwanitz has started the year in superb style as she proved in Linz on Thursday night with a performance that strengthens her position as the favourite for gold in Göteborg next month.
A final round throw of 19.58m equalled the best in the world this year which she herself set last weekend in Sassnitz and shows the form she is in so close to the European Indoor Athletics Championships in Sweden.
Schwanitz is 27 and has been knocking on the door of a major title for the past nine years since she was third at the World Junior Championships in Grosseto, Italy, in 2004.
Paris in 2011 was her best achievement as 18.65m brought silver behind Russian Anna Avdeyeva, who won gold with 18.70m, and ahead of Josephine Terlecki, of Germany, who was third with 18.09m.
But now Schwanitz is edging closer to the distances she found in 2008 when she set her indoor personal best of 19.68m.
Her series also included a 19.56m with a superb performance in second from Briton Sophie McKinna, whose 16.38m was a national junior indoor record.
It was quite a night for top performance at the Gugl meeting as Slovenia's Zan Rudolf improved his country's national 800m record to 1:46.96, beating Austrian Andreas Vojta in 1:47.14 and Erik Sowinski, of the USA, in 1:47.21.
Greece's Kostas Filippidis, 26, who won silver at the European Athletics Junior Championships in Kaunas in 2005, twice broke his country's national record in the pole vault.
First he cleared 5.77m and then 5.83m, to take him to third on the year's European rankings.