The men and women from Cosma Vilnius had a day to remember as they earned promotion by winning their Group B of the European Champion Clubs Cup in Dubnica nad Vahom.
In the men’s competition, just six points separated the top four in Slovakia, with Vilnius and Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv both finishing on 138. They earned promotion to Group A but the Serbians from AK Radnicki Kragujevac, who ended with 137 points, and Belgium’s Royal Excelsior Sports Club Brussels, with 132, just missed out on moving into the top division.
The women’s competition was a bit more clear cut as Vilnius won by 10 points with 123 from the Centro Universitario Sportivo di Pisa, of Italy, with Serbia’s AK Crvena Zvezda Beograd third with 98.5.
The overall competition was full of a series of fine performance and Vilnius celebrated winning 14 of the events.
In the men’s group, there were wins for Rytis Sakalauskas in the 100m in 10.78, Simas Bertasius in the 3000m in 8:24.96, Justinas Berzanskis in the 3000m steeplechase in 8:55.42 and Edis Matusevicius in the javelin with 74.34m.
Lina Grincikaite led the way in the women’s events for Vilnius as she landed the sprint treble, taking the 100m in 11.86, 200m in 23.81 and then anchoring the 4x100m relay team home in 46.73, while Sonata Tamosaityte, who ran the third leg of the relay, won the 100m hurdles in 13.78.
Egle Balciunaite ran 2:07.87 to win the 800m, with more success on the track coming for Vilnius as Diana Lobacevske won the 5000m in 16:15.46.
Their women field eventers had a fabulous day, too. Giedre Kupstyte reached 15.54m to take the shot put, Zinaida Sendriute was first in the discus with 60.75m and Greta Daunoraite threw the javelin 44.19m for glory.
Back in March at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Prague, Airine Palsyte was fourth in the high jump final and on Saturday she cleared 1.90m to give Vilnius maximum points.
It was not all about the Lithuanian team, though, and there was great delight for Slovakian twins Jana and Dana Veldakova in front of their home supporters.
Competing for VSC Dukla Banska Bystrica, Jana won the long jump with 6.26m and Dana won the triple jump with 13.75m.
Romanian Mihai Donisan, competing for LG Bern, won the men’s high jump with a fine 2.26m while Arnaud Ghislain, of Royal Excelsior, won the 400m hurdles in 51.06 and took quite a scalp with him too as back in seventh in 53.93 was Serbian Emir Bekric, the 2012 European silver medallist and 2013 world bronze medallist, running for AK Radnicki Kragujevac.
Israel’s men showed the importance of all the team combining for good places throughout because they won promotion on the back of taking just one individual event on the track, the 200m which Imri Persiado won in 21.84, and one in the field, as Yochai Halevi produced 16.07m to win the triple jump.