Olympic and world heptathlon champion Carolina Kluft won the pentathlon gold medal after trailing in three events on Friday's opening day of the European Indoor athletics championships.
Kluft, who hasn't lost a multi-event competition in five years, was two points behind Britain's Kelly Sotherton after the 60-m hurdles, high jump and shot put at the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, England.
But her season's best leap of 6.59m in the long jump and second-place in the 800m gave her a winning total of 4,944 points. Sotherton, who won the 800m, had 4,927.
Karin Ruckstuhl of the Netherlands took bronze with 4,801 points.
"It was very hard right from the stat and Kelly pushed all the time on every event," Kluft said. "I will lose one day -- I'm not unbeatable and Kelly will beat me."
The Swede took an early lead on Friday by winning the hurdles in 8.20 seconds -- bettering her 8.64 in Stockholm last month.
She ran within one-hundredth of a second of her personal best to beat Britain's Jessica Ennis, who clocked 8.22, and Sotherton, who ran 8.23.
Ennis, the Commonwealth bronze medalist, cleared a personal best in the high jump of 1.91m, 3cm higher than Kluft. Sotherton also cleared 1.88. Out of 15 competitors, 10 had personal bests.
Olympic silver medalist Austra Skujyte of Lithuania threw 16.48m to win the shot put.
"A good thing is everyone's producing personal bests and raising their game," Sotherton said. "I've really worked my guts out and its been fantastic to come here as we've all raised our game."
Meanwhile in the second qualifying heat in the women's 800m, Karen Harewood of Britain was carried off on a stretcher with a suspected broken left leg as one of four athletes that fell in a collision. Slovakia's Jolanda Ceplak ran 2:02.82 to lead the field going into yesterday's semi-finals.
There was further glory for Sweden with Susanna Kallur retaining the 60m hurdles title in 7.87 seconds.
A photo-finish in the men's 60m hurdles delivered the Netherlands gold and silver. Gregory Sedoc set a personal best of 7.63 seconds, just 0.01 ahead of Marcel van der Westen.
Slovakia won its first indoors gold medal after Mikulas Konopka threw 21.57m in the shot put, 75cm clear of Belarus' Pavel Lyzhyn.
In qualifying for the men's 3,000m, British favorite Mo Farah recovered after falling midway through the race.
"A guy just kicked me on the leg," Farah said. "[Then] I got up and started running the wrong way which lost me some time. I decided I had to catch them -- I didn't want all the training I have done to go out of the window."
He finished in 7 minutes, 55.36 seconds to go through to yesterday's final as one of the fastest losers.
European 5,000m champion Jesus Espana of Spain ran 7:52.50 to top the qualifiers, ahead of Austria's Gunther Weidlinger and Ireland's Alistair Cragg.
European outdoor silver medalist Nathan Douglas leapt 16.96m in the triple jump, and Germany's Bjorn Otto cleared 5.70m in the pole vault to qualify first for yesterday's finals.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier