One long and successful career comes to an end on Sunday (5). The “Monica Iagar Grand Prix“, will be the farewell meeting for the former European Indoor and outdoor champion in the High Jump.
The Romanian jumper born on 1 April 1 1973 recalls her most memorable moment was at European Indoor Championships 1998 in Valencia, Spain. “It was really special, it was my first medal. Afterwards I had more success, but the first one is the best one.“
Later in that year she became European outdoor champion in Budapest. In the same year she also won the World Cup in South Africa. At world level she had best placings of 8th at Olympic Games 2004, 7th at World Championships 2001, and 4th at World Indoor Championships 1999.
She is finishing her career still holding both the indoor and outdoor national records – 2.02 outdoors in 1998 and 2.03 indoors in 1999. She had in total 6 competitions with 2 metres or more.
Now a teacher at a police academy, she is not thinking about becoming a coach, and because Iager is the driving force in the organisation of this special Grand Prix event it looks like she will not have time to jump on Sunday.
But there will be plenty of special guests who will come to honour her career – the ever popular Namibian sprinter Frank Fredericks, now an IOC Member, Erika Strasser from Austria, EAA Council Member, and her long time friend the Czech Triple Jump World champion Sarka Kasparkova.
The Rapid Hall which is usually devoted to Basketball and Handball will on Sunday evening be a place devoted to international high jumping. Some excellent jumpers are in the start list. On the men side, the Ciotti twin brothers from Italy - Nicola and Giulio. Their main opponents should be Russian Pavel Fomenko, Belorussian Gennadiy Moroz, and US Jumper Tora Harris.
The women’s competition will have local star Oana Pantelimon, the Sydney Olympic Games medallist, along with Hungarian Dora Gyorffy, Russian Viktoria Seriogina, Ukrainian World Junior champion Iryna Kovalenko, and strong Czechs Barbora Lalakova and Romana Dubnova.
