Tsatoumas continues to fly far - Greek Indoor Championships
Tuesday 13 February 2007
Athens, Greece - A 8.09m leap by Luis Tsatoumas, who was already the current world indoor season leader in the men’s Long Jump, was the highlight of the 21st Greek Indoor Championships held last weekend (10 / 11 Feb) in Peania, Athens.
One week (3 Feb) after breaking the national record with 8.17m in the Greek capital, Tsatoumas, 25, produced his winning 8.09m jump in the third round of the final. Tsatoumas then ended his competition because of a problem caused by a previous injury. After the competition he said that he will be competing at the IAAF indoor permit meetings in Birmingham (17 Feb) and Athens (24 Feb), and that he is looking forward to Birmingham (2 – 4 March) when the European Indoor Championships will take place.
Last year Tsatoumas, the 2001 European Junior and 2003 European U23 champion, jumped seven times over 8.10m, but failed to claim a continental medal in Gothenburg, although he was among the favourites of the European Championships.
In the women’s Long Jump Panayota Koutsioumari won with a personal indoor best of 6.52m, while the heptahlon athlete Argyro Strataki was second with 6.24m. Strataki won the Heptahlon national championships last week with 4550 points, a national record for Greece and 4th world mark for this season.
After the end of the 2-year suspension, sprinter Ekaterini Thanou started racing last week, when she clocked 7.28 on 3 February. On Saturday Thanou ran the 60m in 7.22, the sixth best performance of the season.
Niki Paneta, 21, was the winner of the women’s Triple Jump with 13.61m. Chrisopigi Devetzi, decided not to compete in indoor meetings this season, after five consecutive years of participating in indoor and outdoor events at the highest level.
Finally, Flora Redoumi in her season debut clocked 8.05 in the 60m Hurdles and so made the standard for the European Indoor Championships.
Michalis Nikitaridis for the IAAF