Nine athletes with world leading marks will be aiming to crown their indoor seasons with gold medals at the Torun 2021 European Athletics Indoor Championships from 4-7 March.
The entry-lists feature world leading athletes in six of the field events, including world record-holder Armand Duplantis who improved his world lead to 6.10m at the Serbian Open Indoor Meeting in Belgrade last week.
Duplantis hasn’t been beaten since the 2019 World Athletics Championships and while the 2018 European champion is the prospective favourite, his winning streak will be threatened by a rejuvenated four-time champion Renaud Lavillenie who arrives fresh from clearing 6.06m in Clermont-Ferrand on Saturday evening, his best vault in seven years.
The Italians will have high hopes in both the women’s long jump and men’s high jump courtesy of Larissa Iapichino and Gianmarco Tamberi who set world leading marks at the Italian Indoor Championships in Ancona last month.
But Iapichino’s 6.91m in the long jump was so much more than just a world lead. She eclipsed the seemingly impenetrable world indoor U20 record set by the great Heike Drechsler in 1983 by three centimetres and at the age of 18, she also matched the national indoor record held by her mother Fiona May.
Incidentally, May’s national indoor record of 6.91m came at the 1998 European Indoor Championships in Valencia where she won the gold medal. Could Iapichino follow suit 23 years later? If she does, Iapichino would become the event’s youngest ever gold medallist.
By contrast, Tamberi boasts a wealth of championship experience and the ebullient reigning champion is back to his best after his well-documented ankle injury on the eve of the 2016 Olympics. Tamberi cleared 2.34m at the Copernicus Cup in Torun for a share of the world lead before securing the outright world lead with a 2.35m clearance in Ancona.
This could be a good championship for teenagers in Torun with 19-year-old Yaroslava Mahuchikh from Ukraine the outstanding favourite for the women’s high jump title. Mahuchikh rocketed to equal third on the world indoor all-time list with a 2.06m clearance in Banska Bystrica last month, eclipsing the long-standing outright national record held by Inha Babakova.
Mahuchikh excels in the major competitions and with the surface in Torun to the liking of high jumpers, the Ukrainian could have her sights on the championship record of 2.05m held by Tia Hellebaut and perhaps even the world indoor record of 2.08m held by Kajsa Bergqvist.
Bergqvist herself has tipped Mahuchikh to one day surpass her world indoor record which has stood on the record books since 2006.
European outdoor triple jump champion Paraskevi Papahristou from Greece is tipped to win the title after reaching out to a world lead of 14.60m in this very same arena last month. Auriol Dongmo will also be looking to become the first Portuguese athlete to win a European indoor shot put title.
Dongmo, who will face Germany’s Christina Schwanitz in Toruń, has won 19 of her last 20 competitions and leads the world list with a national record of 19.65m.
On the track, Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen opened his season with a marvellous European 1500m record of 3:31.80 for an unopposed victory in Lievin and the 20-year-old goes in search of a 1500/3000m double in Torun this weekend.
Ingebrigtsen came away with gold in the 3000m and silver in the 1500m two years ago, a remarkable effort given the 1500m and 3000m heats took place within the same session. But with a more amenable timetable in Torun, Ingebrigtsen could become the first man in championship history to win both titles in the same edition.
Reigning European indoor 60m hurdles champion Nadine Visser from the Netherlands holds a share of the world lead with her recently set Dutch record of 7.81 in Madrid while Belgium’s Noor Vidts leads the way in the pentathlon with her early season score of 4665 points.