ZURICH: Dafne Schippers of the Netherlands easily qualified for Tuesday’s final of the women’s 100 meters, the first of three gold-medal opportunities she is chasing at the European Championships.

Her biggest rivals, Myriam Soumare of France and defending champion Ivet Lalova of Bulgaria also won their semifinal heats. Shippers was fastest, clocking 11.08 seconds, but the swirling winds made time comparisons irrelevant.

Schippers is also favored to win the 200 later in the week and will compete with the Dutch sprint relay team over the weekend.

Winds knocked down some advertising panels in the late afternoon and the evening session was delayed by half an hour as stormy weather went past.

All day, rain, wind and cold temperatures hit Zurich but the men’s race walkers still managed to create a thrilling finish as Miguel Angel Lopez of Spain pulled away from two Russians to win the 20-kilometer event. Aleksandr Ivanov took silver and Denis Strelkov took bronze.

A quartet of walkers entered the final kilometer together. Ivanov sought to shake off Lopez several times but the Spaniard responded and no one could match his last burst.

Lopez finished in 1 hour, 19 minutes, 44 seconds, 1 second ahead of Ivanov and another second in front of Strelkov.

There were eight finals scheduled for Wednesday, including the men’s and women’s 100 meters and the men’s 10,000, with Olympic champion Mo Farah in the field.