Claudia Marx (GER) (© Getty Images)
While the German men’s team will travel to Florence this weekend as the European Cup champions, it is the women’s team, which placed fourth last year that offers up a real surprise, as Claudia Marx will run the 400m Hurdles.
The 26-year-old qualified with her very first race at the distance. It was during the meeting in Kassel, last Friday night that she won in her debut in 55.59 seconds. Additionally she was the first 400m hurdle runner to break the national qualifying time for Helsinki, dipping under the required 55.60.
Although being qualified for the flat 400 metres as well, Marx voted to go for the Hurdles in Florence. Since she has not yet broken the World Championships qualifying standard for the 400m of 51.50 it is very likely that she will come to Helsinki as a 400m hurdle runner. So far at the 400m she has clocked 52.11 seconds (on Sunday in Ulm).
Having clearly beaten her national rivals Anja Neupert and Ulrike Urbansky at the new event Claudia Marx reacted with joy: “This is unbelievable. I never expected to have such a debut at the distance.” She looked good on the home straight and there obviously is room for improvement. Andrea Blackett (Barbados) was second with 55.91, while Neupert took third with 56.58. Urbansky was seventh (57.28).
Claudia Marx said that in training she had not run further than 300m with Hurdles. Since her training partner is 400m hurdler Thomas Goller, she had trained for hurdles for some time. Originally the idea of trying hurdles came from her new coach Dietmar Jarosch, who had guided Heike Meißner to a silver medal at the European Championships in 2002.
Elsewhere in the Kassel meet, Monika Pyrek (Poland) won the Pole Vault with 4.60 metres. Anna Rogowska (Poland) was second with 4.50m, while Carolin Hingst (4.30) took third in front of Silke Spiegelburg (4.30). Björn Otto won the men’s event with 5.60m ahead of Michael Stolle (5.60) and Lars Börgeling (5.50).
Ali Maatoui (Morocco) comfortably won the 1500m in 3:35.52, while Günther Weidlinger was also well ahead in the 3000m Steeplechase. The Austrian clocked 8:22.12. There were fine hurdling results as well in Kassel. Arend Watkins (US) won the men’s 110m final in 13.38 with a 1.0 tail wind. Thomas Blaschek took second in 13.41, while Micah Harris (USA) was third with 13.53.
The women’s 3000m was won by Kenyan Naomi Mugo with 8:55.89, with Sabrina Mockenhaupt second (8:59.19).
Steffi Nerius won the Javelin Throw with 63.97m Sofia Schulte took the Long Jump (6.54). Urszula Gutowicz-Westhof was second with 6.48m, while Sweden’s Heptathlon star Carolina Klüft had to be content with 6.43m for third place.
Jörg Wenig for the IAAF
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EUROPEAN CUP coverage on www.iaaf.org
An indepth SPAR European Cup preview will be published later this week on the IAAF website.
As usual we will also have daily coverage of the competition in Florence, as well as reports from the 1st League European Cup meetings in Gävle (SWE) and Leiria (POR).
IAAF Editorial Manager
