Ivana Vuleta produced the best outdoor performance of her career to win the long jump with 7.14m and give Serbia its first gold medal in the history of the World Athletics Championships on Sunday.
Her country, even back in the days when it was part of the former Yugoslavia, had amassed just three world championships bronze medals prior to Sunday night in the Hungarian capital – two of which belonged to Vuleta herself after finishing third at the 2013 and 2015– but that looked as though it was going to be a redundant statistic as early as the second round.
Jumping first for the opening three rounds, after a foul with her first attempt, Vuleta flew out to 7.05m with her second effort.
The next two rounds saw her foul and jump 6.91m before she flew out to a huge 7.14m – what was to be the winning distance and only supplanted by the 7.24m she produced to win the 2017 world indoor title – with her penultimate effort.
For a moment, there was an agonising wait as the judges confirmed it was a valid jump but then Vuleta, now 33 whose international successes started back in 2008 when she won the world U20 title, saw the distance broadcast on the infield scoreboard and almost deliriously spun around, celebrating with a massive smile on her face.
Her final jump was 6.78m but by then, as the last to jump in the final round, her historic triumph had been confirmed.
Her first global outdoor title at her sixth appearance at the World Championships! 🥹
— European Athletics (@EuroAthletics) August 20, 2023
Ivana Vuleta 🇷🇸 wins long jump gold with an outdoor lifetime best and world lead of 7.14m! 💫#WorldAthleticsChamps pic.twitter.com/rS4idea7Ce
"It has been a long, long, long ride. Every medal, every final is really special but at this age it is really hard to keep everything together. I am glad that I have used all experience I have, it was my greatest ally. I knew I was ready to deliver in the right moment," reflected Vuleta.
"Finally, I did something I was dreaming of for so long. I am so emotional, this medal is really heavy. I prefer indoor competitions because there is more intimacy but after so many years and so many medals, I just knew I had to have one gold from an outdoor championships," she added.
She was the only person to go over seven metres with her nearest rival, USA’s Tara Davis-Woodhall – who was the first to congratulate Vuleta – 21cm in arrears while Romania’s 2009 world U18 champion Alina Rotaru-Kottman got an unexpected bronze thanks to her final round 6.88m which saw her move up from sixth to third.
Second world title for KJT
Katarina Johnson-Thompson’s heptathlon win with 6740 points didn’t have the same historic overtones as Vuleta’s triumph but it was still a hugely joyous occasion, marking her comeback after several years of injury issues and coaching upheavals.
Her winning total was the fourth best of her career and the highest since she won her previous world title at Doha 2019.
Lying overnight in second place, KJT as she is commonly known to the British public moved into pole position with a long jump of 6.54m, going 19 points ahead of her American rival Anna Hall.
The Briton moved further ahead with a personal best 46.14m javelin throw, extending her advantage over Hall to 43 points.
However, she knew she needed every point in the bank that she could muster as the American was a better 800m runner.
Hall led the final event of a gruelling two days in very hot and humid condition from the gun and desperately tried to grab the gold back and needed to win by approximately three seconds, but KJT stuck doggedly to her task, buoyed by the sight of Hall tiring over the last 200 metres.
On top of the world again! 🌍 @JohnsonThompson 🇬🇧 regains her heptathlon title at the #WorldAthleticsChamps with 6740 points! 🙌🥇 pic.twitter.com/HLdCZByQD9
— European Athletics (@EuroAthletics) August 20, 2023
The American crossed the line in a heptathlon championship best of 2:04.09 and it was then just a question of how much time would elapse before the Briton crossed the line.
The answer was not much, in fact less than a second-and-a-half as KJT stopped the clock in 2:05.63, a personal best by nearly two seconds.
The time was enough to give Johnson-Thompson victory by just 20 points.
“This has been one of the most gruelling heptathlons I've ever done: the delayed start yesterday, the long day, then I got about three hours sleep last night. All these girls deserve such huge respect but I just knew I could prove to myself and prove to all the people that I could still do it. This is the culmination of so much hard work. I'm so happy I'm crying. I can't help it,” said the Briton.
“I know that if I believed in myself I could do it. But it wasn't easy. In the 800m I wasn't thinking anything at all, I was just staring at the back if her [Anna Hall] legs thinking 'Don't let her get away'.
“I haven't run that sort of 800m time for four years but the last lap was amazing. I can't take it in, it's making me emotional. It's been so hard in the last few years but now it seems like it was all worth it,” she added.
Anouk Vetter gave the Netherlands something to smile about after their two opening days calamities with Sifan Hassan and Femke Bol as she laboured around two laps of the track in 2:20.49 but did just enough to hold onto the bronze medal with 6501, and just 63 points covering third to seventh places.
Hammer medals for Nowicki and Halasz
Pawel Fajdek’s five-edition reign as the world champion came to an end and the Pole had to settle for fourth place on a night when Europe’s top throwers were usurped by Canada’s inspired Ethan Katzberg, who threw a national record of 81.25m with his fifth attempt to move up from first to third.
Hungary’s Bence Halasz led for the first three roubeofre nds after his huge opener of 80.82m, an effort that saw the home supporters almost raise the roof of the National Athletics Centre.
However, the local star never improved and Halacz had to settle for the bronze medal when Poland’s reigning Olympic champion Wojciech Nowicki reached 80.83m in the fourth round and then 81.02m immediately after what would be Katzberg’s winning effort in round five.
It was Nowicki's second successive world championships silver medal following on from a run a three bronze medals before he finished second in Eugene last year.
Great Britain’s 2018 European champion Zhernel Hughes recovered from a poor pickup over the opening 20 metres in the 100m final to take bronze in 9.88, the second best time of his career but he was just squeezed out of collecting the silver medal by one-hundredth of a second.
Europe will have eight men in Wednesday’s men’s 1500m final with Jakub Ingebrigtsen the favourite for gold after another commanding his performance to win his semi-final in 3:34.98 but faster still was the Netherlands’ European U20 1500m and 5000m gold medallist Niels Laros who set a Dutch national record of 3:32.74 when finishing third in the faster first semi.
Just Niels Laros doing Niels Laros things. 🫠
— European Athletics (@EuroAthletics) August 20, 2023
At 18y and 125d, Laros makes the #WorldAthleticsChamps final in an outright Dutch record of 3:32.74! pic.twitter.com/4UrqRg4Oj0
One of the standout performances of the morning session was Håvard Bentdal Ingvaldsen’s Norwegian 400m record of 44.39, the fastest time in the first round over one lap of the track.
The 2023 European U23 champion sliced almost half-a-second off his previous national record of 44.86 set at the Oslo Diamond League meeting two months ago to move up to sixth on the European senior 400m list and second on the continental U23 list.
World Athletics Championships Budapest 23 full results and timetable can be found here.
Phil Minshull for European Athletics