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News24 May 1998


EUROPE FIGHTS BACK ...

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Just when you thought that Europe’s sprinters had taken a permanent holiday - up pop Carlo Boccarini (Italy) and Christine Arron (France) to show there’s still some fizz in the Old World. Arron improved Marie-Jose Perec’s seven year-old French 100m record to 10.95 yesterday in Bonneuil, second only to Marion Jones this summer (10.71) over the classic sprint distance. Impressively, it was 24 year-old Arron’s first competition since she injured herself racing indoors in February.

"I was a little surprised with the result because I had only an average start," she said after the race, "I had only planned to run a technically correct race." The sprinter was fortunate to have been aided by a tail wind of 2 metres per second - the maximum permitted for record purposes.

Arron who, like double Olympic champion Perec was born and raised in Guadeloupe, finished fourth over 100m at the World Championships in Athens last year and won a bronze in the sprint relay. Curiously, in Athens a biomechanics team discovered that Arron reached a higher peak velocity than Marion Jones in the 100m final (10.65 compared to 10.64 metres per second). Perhaps this summer Arron will give the talented Jones a real run for her money.

If Arron’s performance was no great shock, Boccarini’s certainly was. The young Roman improved his personal best from 10.53 to 10.08 in one inspired charge down the track in Rieti on May 9. The wind reading was a modest plus 0.7 mps. The following day Boccarini clocked 21.08 in the 200m … but into a 4.6 mps headwind.

Boccarini is now second on Italy’s all-time list only to the legendary Pietro Mennea (1980 Olympic Champion at 200m) and many await his next race to see if he can repeat his Rieti result. In any case, Italy is enjoying a mini-renaissance at the moment after a couple of very lean years. Paolo Camossi, (24) triple jumped 17.20 into a 1.7 headwind in Rome yesterday (May 24), just two centimetres shy of the 30 year-old record of Giuseppe Gentile (a world record originally). A former European Junior champion, Camossi also long jumped 8.00 a day earlier and 8.06 recently.

Italy’s women are also waking up … Sprinter Manuela Levorato (21) clocked 22.84 - into a 2.7 headwind - for a new national record yesterday (May 24). A day earlier she had clocked 11.24 (wind +0.8), just 100th of a second outside the national record. Finally, high jumper Francesca Bradamante (25) cleared 1.95 on May 23 in Udine, a new personal best by 4 centimetres, and equal to the third best in the world so far in 1998.

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