Heidler gets Germany off to good start at SPAR European Team Championships

Betty Heidler won the hammer at the Stockholm 2011 SPAR European Team Championships.

Germany's Betty Heidler, the 2010 European Athletics Championships gold medallist and world record holder, dominated the competition from her first throw to win at the Championships for the second successive year.

Throwing seventh, she opened with 73.01m, and led by more than a metre-and-half after the first round.

She then improved to 73.43m in the next round, doing a little skip and dance in the circle to indicate her pleasure.

The distance ended up as the winner, her fifth successive victory, with Heidler having almost two metres to speare over her nearest rival as she followed up her best throw with 72.87m and 73.19m.

Russia's Tatyana Lysenko, Heidler's predecessor as European champion in 2006 and also a former world record holder, finished a distant second with 71.44m, her best effort coming in the first round which she was unable to improve upon.

Czech Republic's Katerina Safrnov will go home very happy after adding 10 centimetres to her personal best; her second round effort of 69.39m clinching third place and gaining unexpected extra points in a field containing six women who had thrown over 70 metres this season.

With the hammer being rarely contested in the 1912 Olympic stadium - it was nearly every thrower's first experience of throwing in Stockholm - Heidler's winning throw also added almost 13 metres to former stadium record which had stood since 1997.

Great Britain's Greene gets his hat trick

Great Britain's team captain David Greene, meanwhile, fulfilled his role admirably by getting maximum points for the third year in succession with a win in a Championships best of 49.21.

Greene, running in lane six, was ahead from the second hurdles, although the Ukraine's 2010 European Athletics Championships bronze medallist Stanislav Melnykov, two lanes to Greene's inside, also started fast.

However, as Melnykov fased in the second half of the race, the 2010 European champion kept his composure and executed his race plan to perfection.

Germany's 22-year-old Georg Fleischhauer, in lane seven, came through strongly over the final 150m despite Greene being on his shoulder on the second bend, to take second place in a personal best of 49.56 and keep his country in pole position overall after two events.

Click here for all event reports from Stockholm.