It was quite a weekend for Hungary’s Olympic hammer champion Krisztian Pars.
First stop was Szczecin in Poland on Saturday where he was competing at the 60th Janusz Kusocinski Memorial, an EA Classic meeting which he won with a fine performance of 79.35m.
The event was part of the IAAF Hammer challenge and he beat Marcel Lomnicky, of Slovakia, who was second with 78.40m and Poland’s World champion Pawel Fajdek, third with 78.15m.
Then, 24 hours later, Pars was back in own country in Veszprem at the 56th Balaton Championships and it was there that he threw even further as he won with 81.31m, the best in the world this year.
Pars, the defending European champion, now leads the rankings from Fajdek’s 79.59m from Halle last month.
Back in Poland, the Janusz Kusocinski Memorial is one of Europe’s oldest one-day meetings and there was a superb 800m for the home crowd to savour with European Indoor champion Adam Kszczot beating his countryman Marcin Lewandowski, the 2010 European outdoor champion.
Kszczot won in 1:45.48 from Lewandowski in 1:45.90 with fellow Pole Artur Kuciapski third in a personal best of 1:46.04.
Double Olympic shot put champion Tomasz Majewski had to settle for second in front of his own fans as his 21.04m was not enough to pass America’s 2007 World champion Reese Hoffa who won with 21.26m while Poland’s World Indoor high jump champion Kamila Licwinko beat teammate Justyna Kasprzycka on countback after they had both cleared 1.95m.
There was also a superb run in the 1500m by Sofia Ennaoui, who won in a Polish national junior record of 4:07.34.
In Banska Bystrica, Slovakia’s 2010 European hammer champion Libor Charfreitag made a good return to the sport after health problems as he threw 72.01m while Lucia Klocova, who was eighth in the final at the Olympic Games in London in 2012, won her first 1500m after a maternity break as she triumphed in 4:24.71.
Norway’s Tonje Angelsen went over at 1.93m to win the high jump in Stjordal and in Zofingen, Switzerland’s Alex Wilson won the 200m in 20.83 to confirm the Zurich standard.
Innsbruck was the setting for the 10th Golden Roof Challenge and there was a surprise in the men’s pole vault as Russia’s Sergey Kucheryanu cleared 5.68m to beat the World indoor champion, Greece’s Kostadinos Filippidis, who had a best of 5.58m.
And in Russia itself, there was a home win in Cheboksary as Aleksandr Yargunkin produced a superb display to take the 50km at the Russian walking championships with an impressive time of 3:42:25 to move to third on the European Athletics rankings.
The AA Drink Fanny Blankers-Koen Games in Hengelo on Sunday saw Ukraine’s Andriy Protsenko break the meeting record as he won the high jump with 2.33m while Great Britain’s European champion Lynsey Sharp won the 800m in a personal best of 2:00.09.
Sifan Hassan, the Netherland’s national record-holder, took the 1500m in 4:01.79 and Renaud Lavillenie cleared 5.80m to win the pole vault. In the discus, Germany’s Robert Harting, with 68.47m, beat Poland’s Piotr Malachowski, with 67.07m, and Ukraine’s Oksana Okuneva won the high jump on countback with 1.95m from Croatian Ana Simic.
In the women’s hammer in Frankisch-Crumbach, Germany’s World record-holder Betty Heidler moved to the top of the European Athletics rankings with 76.91m in the final round. It was superb performance as she beat and replaced Zhang Weng at the head of the lists.
Weng was second with 75.73m and her teammate Zhang Wenxiu was third with 75.30m.
Russia’s European 800m champion Yuriy Borzakovskiy began his season in style with victory at the Yulia Pechonkina meeting in Yerino in 1:48.71 and across the country in Cheboksary, Yekaterina Gubina won the hurdles in a quick 12.93 at a regional championships.
THE WEEK AHEAD
Europe is staging 94 meetings this week and for all the dates, visit our European Athletics Calendar for all the details.