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Record leap earns Hellebaut gold

Naide Gomes of Portugal competes in the long jump final on Saturday at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Birmingham, England. PHOTO: AFP

Belgian high jumper Tia Hellebaut was the star of the second day at the European Athletics Indoor Championships when she cleared a championship record of 2.05m on Saturday.

Hellebaut, the European outdoor champion last year, added 1cm to the former record of Bulgaria's Stefka Kostadinova which had stood for 18 years.

She was one of several athletes to win a European indoor title for the first time on Saturday who could challenge for further medals at the outdoor World Championships in Osaka, Japan, in the summer.

Britain's Phillips Idowu and Nicola Sanders were impressive winners of the men's triple jump and women's 400m respectively.

Idowu emulated Hellebaut by bounding out to a 2007 world best of 17.56m in the first round, relieving Sweden's absent Christian Olsson of his world-leading mark and also his championship record.

Sanders set a new Commonwealth indoor 400m record of 50.02 seconds.

Ireland's David Gillick managed to overhaul Germany's Bastian Swillims 3m before the line in 45.52 seconds to win the men's 400m.

Portugal's Naide Gomes, who like Gillick also won in 2005, retained her women's long jump title.

She leapt out to 6.89m in the fifth of the six round competition, the longest distance in the world this year.

Germany's Danny Ecker hadn't won a European indoor title before he cleared 5.71m in a below-par pole vault competition but he knew what a gold medal from the event looked like as his mother Heide Rosendahl had won the long jump in 1971, seven years before he was born.

Italy's Cosimo Caliandro caused the biggest upset of the day when he won the sprint finish of an enthralling but tactical men's 3,000m in 8mins 2.44 sec.

Poland's Lidia Chojecka fulfilled her status as the fastest European over the metric mile this winter with a comfortable victory over 1,500m in 4:05.13.

If the winners provided the highlights of the Championships, clearly the low point as far as the crowd was concerned was the return to big time athletics of Greek sprinter Katerina Thanou.

The 32-year-old former World and European indoor champion and Olympic medalist was infamously suspended before the start of the 2004 Olympics along with teammate Kostas Kenteris for failing to show up for an anti-doping test.

She has recently completed a two-year ban from the sport.

Thanou was jeered by some sections of the crowd before and during the morning heat which she won in 7.26 seconds.

In the semi-finals, Thanou improved to a season's best of 7.22 seconds but finished second behind Belgium's Kim Gevaert.
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