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Stefanidi will raise the noise level

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Home support can take an athlete that centimetre further or that milli-second quicker – and there is no competition like the European Athletics Team Championships to whip up the noise of the locals.

It is why, on the weekend of June 20-21, there will surely be a huge noise when Ekaterini Stefanidi moves on to the pole vault runaway in Heraklion.

On the island of Crete, Greece plays host to the First League of the European Athletics Team Championships and in 25-year-old Stefanidi, they have one of their biggest names in track and field.

Watch this promotional clip for Heraklion 2015:

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In the past nine months Stefanidi has won silver at both the European Athletics Championships in Zurich in August and the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Prague in March and she will play a big part in Greece’s bid to qualify for the Super League.

A pole vaulter since her teens, she has a stack of junior records to her name including an indoor 4.37m which was a World Youth mark when she was just 15 in 2005, the same year she became world youth champion.

She was beaten both in Zurich and in Prague by Russia’s Anzhelika Sidorova but it was far from a defeat. As she said after in Switzerland when asked if it felt like she had lost gold:

'No I won silver. I am super excited as this is my first medal in the senior championships.'

What has been equally impressive this year is the prospect of how far she might clear having already matched her personal best of 4.71m.

She first achieved that in Monaco last July but at the Drake Relays in Des Moines last month, Stefanidi went over the height again, a world lead and a vault which led to her being named the European Athlete of the Month for April.

Just one more reason why those home fans will raise the noise level when her name is announced to the crowd in the heat of the action in Heraklion.



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