MADRID, 7 March 2005 — Olympic champion Yelena Isinbayeva broke the world indoor women’s pole vault record for the fourth time this year, providing the climax of a triumphant three days for Russia at the European Indoor Championships.
After the last of her rivals had bowed out yesterday, Isinbayeva soared over the bar at 4.90 meters to break the mark she had bettered last month in Donetsk, Birmingham and Leivin.
Hosts Spain had to wait until the dying stages to claim their first gold when Cuban-born Joan Lino Martinez won the long jump with his fourth leap of 8.37 meters. The Spanish crowd had earlier erupted in fury when Luis Flores crashed to the track after colliding with Pole Piotr Klimczak at the end of the third leg of the men’s 4x400 meters relay.
Poland were disqualified but it was little consolation to the Spaniards who finished fifth and last in a race won by the French quartet.
Spaniards were also forced to take minor places in one of their favored events, the men’s 1,500 meters. Juan Carlos Higuero and Reyes Estevez, the European indoor and outdoor silver medalists respectively, finished second and third to world indoor silver medalist Ivan Heshko of Ukraine.
The best contest of the evening came in the men’s high jump where Sweden’s Olympic champion Stefan Holm and Russia’s European outdoor gold medalist Yaroslav Rybakov battled for more than two hours. With the bar at 2.40, both men missed once before Holm summoned all his resources and cleared the winning height. Roman Sebrle of the Czech Republic overhauled Russian Aleksandr Pogorelov in the final discipline of the men’s heptathlon to retain the title. Sebrle clocked two minutes 39.64 seconds to earn 877 points for an overall total of 6,232. Pogorelov, who finished last in 2:56.32, was second with 6,111.
Larisa Chzhao became the first Russian to win the women’s 800 meters since the breakup of the Soviet Union, dipping under two minutes to win in 1:59.97 and Lidia Chojecka of Poland flew away from the field on the final two laps to win the women’s 3,000 in a season’s best 8:43.76. The men’s 60 meters hurdles final lost three athletes to false starts before the event finally started. Ladji Doucoure won France’s first gold medal of the championships, clocking 7.50 ahead of Spaniard Felipe Vivancos.
Susanna Kallur underlined the emergence of Sweden as a world athletics power when she defeated her twin sister Jenny by 0.19 of a second to win the women’s hurdles in a season’s best and national record 7.80.
