Malte Mohr established himself as the man to beat in Sopot with a brilliant performance in front of a huge home crowd in Berlin on Saturday night.
The pole vault at the IAAF World Indoor Championships next weekend might be without new world record-holder Renaud Lavillenie, but it will hardly lack world class performance as Mohr showed.
The German produced an indoor personal best of 5.90m on his third attempt as he triumphed in front of a crowd of 10,500 at the first ISTAF Indoor in the O2 World Arena.
It had been over two years since his last personal best – 5.86m in Leipzig in February 2011 – and he is on course for the first major gold medal of a career where often he has been close to being the champion.
Back in 2010 in Doha, Mohr, 27, won silver at the World Indoor Championships behind Australian Steven Hooker and has two bronze medals from the last two European Athletics Indoor Championships.
But he is now heading to Poland in the indoor form of his life.
Second in the world rankings this year, he has shown he is on an upward trend with this 5.90m after his 5.84m, back in Leipzig, last month.
His victory in Berlin came ahead of Greece’s Kostadinos Filippidis, who was second on countback from Jan Kudlicka, of the Czech Republic, with both men clearing 5.70m.
Morh was one of four German winners.
David Storl is also heading to Sopot in fine shape and though he had only one legal effort, it was enough as he won the shot put with 21.20m as he beat Georgi Ivanov, of Bulgaria, who was second with 20.40m and the Czech Republic’s Tomas Stanek, who was third with 20.33m.
Verena Sailer is running as good as ever as she proved by winning the 60m in 7.12 – a time that equalled her personal best, ahead of Tahesia Harrigan-Scott, of the British Virgin Islands, in 7.17.
Such is the size of the arena, the event was able to stage discus indoors, the first time such a competition has taken place in Germany at an international meeting.
But victory did not go the way many would have expected as Olympic, European and triple world champion Robert Harting was beaten into fourth as fellow German Martin Wierig won with 64.82m.
Polish duo Piotr Malachowski, with 63.73m, and Robert Urbanek, with 62.27m, finished second and third respectively, ahead of Harting, who had a best throw of 62.20m.