Home favourite Ewa Swoboda produced another scintillating piece of sprinting on home soil at the Copernicus Cup in Torun, a World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold meeting, on Tuesday (6) evening.
In a near re-run of the 60m final at the ORLEN Cup in Lodz last week, Swoboda pounced out of the blocks and narrowly held off the quickly improving Italian Zaynab Dosso who tracked the Pole with real intent on her immediate inside.
After winning in Lodz with 7.04, Swoboda maintained her unbeaten winning streak in 2024 with victory in a world lead of 7.01 ahead of Dosso who improved her Italian record from 7.05 to 7.02 to finish 0.01 behind Swoboda for the second time this year.
"I feel very good after today's performance. Each run is getting faster and faster which is motivating. That's how it's supposed to be. I'm glad the Italian was pushing me from behind. It was an additional motivation to run faster.
"Today's run is a great forecast before the upcoming Polish Championships and World Indoor Championships. My only goal at the moment is to train in health for these two events," said Swoboda.
The Italy versus Poland theme continued in the men’s 60m hurdles with European indoor silver medallist Jakub Szymanski - who broke the Polish record in Dusseldorf on Sunday with 7.47 - charging through the field for victory in 7.48 ahead of Italian record-holder Lorenzo Simonelli in 7.56.
In the last event of the programme, European 100m hurdles champion Pia Skrzyszowska couldn’t quite maintain the streak of Polish victories as she had to give way to Nadine Visser from the Netherlands who is back on the road to her best form after an injury-plagued 2023 season.
Visser, who won her second European indoor 60m hurdles title on this track in 2021 with a Dutch record of 7.77, inched ahead of Skrzyszowska who got the better start to win in 7.80, to match her season’s best from Metz on Saturday afternoon.
Skrzyszowska was visibly disappointed not to come away with the victory on home soil but her time of 7.81 was a season’s best and represented the third fastest time of her career so far.
Piotr Lisek also won the pole vault on home soil with a 5.75m clearance on countback from Menno Vloon from the Netherlands much to the delight of the near capacity crowd at the Arena Torun.
Diaz improves to 17.61m in the triple jump
Andy Diaz improved his world leading mark from 17.46m to 17.61m in the second round of the triple jump.
And this proved to be his final valid effort of the competition. After opening his account with a promising 17.25m, Diaz built on that effort with a world lead of 17.61m - to move to tenth on the European indoor all-time list - before passing his next three jumps and ending with a foul.
Diaz, who won’t be eligible to compete for Italy at the Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships but will be able to don the Italian colours at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, won by more than half-a-metre from Portugal’s Tiago Pereira with 17.02m.
Lieke Klaver controlled the 'A' race of the 400m. The European indoor silver medallist led from start to finish, winning in 50.57 ahead of Henriette Jaeger who set a Norwegian indoor record of 51.05.
Klaver might have lost her world lead to her training partner Femke Bol who powered to a 49.69 clocking in Metz but she did prise the meeting record from Bol who clocked 50.64 on this track in 2022.
European U23 100m champion Jeremiah Azu is renowned for his fast start and he demonstrated his quickness from the blocks, winning the 60m final in 6.57 ahead of Polish younger Oliver Wdowik who equalled his lifetime best of 6.60. Former world and European indoor champion Richard Kilty was fourth in 6.61, his fastest time in four years.
With the Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships just over four months away, the Italian indoor 1500m record was rewritten for the fourth time in the space of 10 days.
Ossama Meslek took ownership of the record with 3:36.02 in Metz last weekend and the British-based Italian reduced the mark to 3:35.63 to finish fifth, one place behind Spain's Adel Mechaal in 3:35.53.
Full results here.
Steven Mills for European Athletics