European 100m champion Gina Lückenkemper will go head-to-head with Poland’s Ewa Swoboda at the ISTAF Indoor in Düsseldorf on 29 January, the first World Athletics Indoor Tour Silver meeting to be held in Europe in 2023.
The ISTAF Indoor in Dusseldorf is one of 14 Silver meetings on the indoor calendar in Europe for 2023. The full European indoor calendar can be found here.
Lückenkemper was one of the star performers on home soil at the European Athletics Championships in Munich last summer, winning a thrilling 100m final before closing the championships by helping the hosts to gold in the 4x100m relay.
Swoboda just missed out on an individual medal in Munich with a fourth-place finish but the Pole might have the advantage indoors. Swoboda was in prolific form during the indoor season in 2022, breaking the seven second-barrier at the Polish Indoor Championships with 6.99 which puts her fourth on the European all-time list.
Swoboda will be looking for her third victory in Dusseldorf after winning last year in 7.10 and back in 2016 in 7.16 when she was still only 18 years old. Since then, Swoboda has picked up silver and gold medals in the 60m at the European Athletics Indoor Championships.
The 60m line-up also includes Alexandra Burghardt who ran the third leg of Germany’s gold medal-winning team in the 4x100m in Munich last summer and also won a silver medal at the Winter Olympics in Beijing in the bobsleigh.
In the 60m hurdles, reigning two-time European indoor champion Nadine Visser goes head-to-head with reigning European 100m hurdles champion Pia Skrzyszowska from Poland.
Visser won at this meeting last year in a season’s best of 7.93 but the rest of her indoor campaign was curtailed by a hamstring injury. Still not at the height of her powers outdoors, Visser just missed out on a medal in the 100m hurdles at the European Athletics Championships in fourth.
The line-up also includes European silver medallist Luca Kozak from Hungary while 2016 European champion Cindy Roleder will bid farewell to the Dusseldorf crowd in her last indoor season before retirement.
Elsewhere, France’s Pascal Martinot-Lagarde headlines the men’s 60m hurdles line-up while Great Britain’s European 100m bronze medallist Jeremiah Azu takes on last year’s winner Arthur Cisse from the Ivory Coast and a strong German contingent including Kevin Kranz in the men’s 60m.
As previously announced, reigning world and Olympic long jump champion Malaika Mihambo will make her season’s debut in her specialist event in Dusseldorf.