Our Amsterdam focus centres on Serbia’s Ivana Spanovic, a woman determined to win her first outdoor gold.
A week today, on the opening night of the European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam, the event will welcome one of the most consistent medallists in the sport.
Serbia’s Ivana Spanovic will step out for the qualifying of the long jump knowing all her rivals will be looking at every move she makes. She is the one to beat; she might just be unbeatable.
On the international senior stage, the impact made by Spanovic has been gradual. She gained the experience - and then she became one of the major players.
As she heads to Amsterdam, she will be out to complete a double.
She is the European indoor champion after her triumph in Prague last year and now her first senior outdoor title beckons, with the final on the Friday evening of the championships.
Justifiably, she is the favourite.
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Spanovic, 26, has won IAAF Diamond League events in Shanghai (6.95m), Oslo (6.94m) and Stockholm (6.90m) in recent weeks and is one of only three women in the Amsterdam line-up to have gone beyond 6.80m this year, with Ukraine’s Maryna Bekh (6.93m) and Türkiye’s Karin Melis Mey (6.85) the other two.
While it would half be expected for Spanovic to hold national records both indoors and out in the long jump, she also has the marks for the indoor 60m and pentathlon. An all-round ability for a woman who first made the final at the European Athletics Championships in Barcelona 2010, when she finished eighth with 6.60m.
By then she very much had the taste for the podium. She was the world junior champion (2008) and European junior silver medallist (2009) and though she failed to make the European final in Helsinki 2012, a year after winning silver at the European Athletics U23 Championships, her future looked bright.
That was confirmed when she won world long jump bronze in Moscow 2013, a success that took her to the European final in Zurich two years ago when she came face to face with France’s defending champion Eloyse Lesueur.
It was a classic competition.
Spanovic put down her marker in the first round with a superb 6.81m to lead from Lesueur with 6.65m.
The Frenchwoman then fouled on her next two attempts before raising her game in round four to jump 6.85m.
Now Spanovic had to find something special again - and she so nearly did. Her fifth round brought drama to the event before the scoreboard showed it was 6.80m.
But the outcome was progress for Spanovic, her first senior silver medal.
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With it came a growing confidence which was then transferred to Prague a few months later with European indoor glory with her first senior gold in a national indoor record of 6.98m.
A major target was then achieved in Beijing last summer when she broke seven metres twice in the world final, with 7.01m on both occasions as she won bronze again. She then took that record to 7.02m at the Diamond League meeting in Zurich less than a week after the championships.
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It is a picture of brilliant form, brilliant consistency, and in 2016 it has been no different.
Spanovic won silver at the world indoors in Portland last March and now has a collection of the best jumps in the world this year.
With a week to go, she could hardly be in better shape.
IVANA SPANOVIC AT THE EUROPEAN ATHLETICS CHAMPIONSHIPS
Barcelona 2010 (28 July)
Long Jump Final
1. Ineta Radevica (LAT) 6.92m
8. Ivana Spanovic 6.60m
Helsinki 2012 (27/28 June)
Long Jump Final
1. Eloyse Lesueur (FRA) 6.81m
Qualifying
14. Ivana Spanovic 6.33m
Zurich 2014 (13 August)
Long Jump Final
1. Lesueur 6.85m
2. Ivana Spanovic 6.81m
3. Darya Klishina (RUS) 6.65m