C O M P E T I T I O N U P D A T E
International Association of Athletics Federations
Association Internationale des Fédérations d’Athlétisme
PLETHORA OF RECORDS AS ATHLETES BRAVE THE WIND AND RAIN IN SHERBROOOKE
11 July 2003
Sherbrooke - The young athletes in Sherbrooke responded to the driving rain
and gusting winds that plagued the earlier sessions with a succession of
Championships Records and personal bests, with a record number of countries
sharing the medal honours after eleven Finals had been contested.
The first final of the day saw Cristine Spataru from Romania wind up a
series of four jumps (she elected to skip the two final rounds once her
winning position was guaranteed), all of them over 13 metres, with the final
clincher and record bound of 13.86 metres. “I didn’t think that 13.33 (ed.
her opening performance) was going to be good enough to win the event, so I
pushed myself to go further on my fourth jump and I set the record,” she
said afterwards.
There was more excitement in the battle for the other podium places, with
Elina Sorsa from Finland winning the challenge to take the silver medal
ahead of Aliki-Yvoni Askitopoulou (GRE) with her final performance of 12.95
that bettered the Greek’s best mark by just 2 centimetres and pushed out of
the medals Vanessa Alessiani from Italy, who had jumped a personal best of
12.91 with her last jump.
In a cliffhanger of a Javelin final, Julio Cesar de Oliveira snatched
victory with his massive last effort as he made a massive improvement on his
earlier throws and launched his spear out to a new Championship Record of
81.16 metres, after trailing the competition leader until then, South
Africa’s Robert Oosthuizen. Neither of the two had bettered 80 metres until
that last throw.
Read detailed event reports and see all the results at http://HYPERLINK
“http://www.iaaf.org/wyc03/index.html” www.iaaf.org/wyc03/index.html
<http://HYPERLINK > .