Stockholm prepares to jump to it

“A traditional invitational athletics meeting is built around the track events with the odd field event added more or less to fill any gaps that might happen to occur in the running activities,” said GE Galan meeting director Ulf Saletti at the press conference on Monday (9 Feb). “Our meet this year will be almost the opposite, because the main focus of GE Galan will definitely be on the five jumping events.”

The obvious reason for this unique concept is of course that each of the five jumping events will feature a Swedish World Championships medallist from last year.

Women’s Long Jump: Carolina Klüft will be opening her 5-meets-only indoor campaign, where she will concentrate solely on the Long Jump thus foregoing any attempt to defend her World Indoor title in the Pentathlon. But who would dare to bet against her challenging for the Long Jump title in Budapest? Competing against two former World champions – Fiona May (ITA) and Niurka Montalvo (ESP) – the GE Galan seasonal opener will provide a good indication of Klüft’s chances against the event’s specialists.

Her 6.61 in the World Indoor Pentathlon last year was only 23 cm shorter than the winning mark in the Long Jump, and this Monday Klüft reported that she was physically much better (stronger, faster) this year after successfully adding one more autumn/winter of training (10-11 sessions per week), which had all gone “according to plan”.

Men’s Triple Jump: Christian Olsson also gave a very upbeat report about his training period with all tests indicating physical improvements over the whole spectrum of factors. He is obviously also very eager to restart his winter after his Gothenburg experience last Tuesday (17.16m) when a much too unstable runway played havoc with his technique.

“If I can (as in Gothenburg) get over 17 in aborted jumps landing with my legs almost vertical I ought to be able to jump very far on a better runway, and the one used here in Stockholm is actually the one on which I jumped 17.80 two years ago, so I know that I can handle it well.”

On Thursday Olsson will need to, as he will be up against men like Cuba’s Paris silver medallist Yoandri Betanzos, and the only jumper who during Christian’s reign at the top begun has finished threateningly close to him on a couple of occasions, Romania’s Marian Oprea.

Men’s High Jump: Fired up by his frustrating second place finish in Paris last summer, Stefan Holm put together his toughest ever autumn and winter of training and although still training hard has come out this season better than ever. In Glasgow he had a clean sheet up to 2.31 before attempting 2.40. In Gothenburg he had no failures until 2.34 which he made on his second attempt before three close misses at 2.37. Latterly in Arnstadt he had eight straight clearances up to 2.36 (equalled PB) and one of the attempts at 2.40 was really close.

Originally everything was set for a Paris rerun in the Stockholm Globe Arena on Thursday, with World Champion Jacques Freitag (RSA) and bronze medallist Mark Boswell (CAN) scheduled to compete but both have been forced to cancel their appearances with short notice due to injury problems. So although the current number 3 on the World Indoor list – Slovenian Rozle Prezelj – will be competing it is hard to see him or anyone else capable of truly challenging the current “on a mission” Stefan Holm!

Women’s High Jump: Thanks to Kajsa Bergqvist this has been the feature event of the recent editions of the GE Galan but this year she will find it tough as the persistent achilles problems that ruined much of last summer even made it uncertain whether she would compete at all indoors this winter.

However, she finally decided upon a very limited indoor season but was not expecting much more than 1.95 in her first meeting in Arnstadt, last Saturday. Thus she was all smiles afterwards, not only because she made 2.02 and had good attempts at the would-be national indoor record of 2.04 but also because the Achilles tendon didn’t bother her at all!

Last winter Bergqvist followed her 2.02 for 2nd in Arnstadt with a 2.03 win in Stockholm and of course she is now hoping for something similar. She might very well need that kind of height to win as she will be up against Vita Palamar (UKR) who cleared 2.00 for third in Arnstadt. The winner at GE Galan two years ago Marina Kuptsova (RUS), however, doesn’t yet appear to have found the form necessary to be a serious challenger this time.

Men’s Pole Vault: Paris World bronze medallist Patrik Kristiansson will probably need a new Swedish Indoor Record if he has any plans to win this competition. The main favourite is Israel’s outdoor European champion Aleksandr Averbukh who had an impressive performance in Gothenburg last week (5.71m and opened the winter with 5.80m in Moscow), but there are also several others in the GE Galan Pole Vault that are capable of 5.70+ vaults.

Running events

The capacity crowd of 10,400 (all tickets were already sold a month ago which was before any major advertising had been done!) will also have some running events to keep them entertained too.

Especially the men’s 800m looks loaded with the top five runners in this year’s world list - Yuriy Borzakovskiy (RUS), Wilfred Bungei (KEN), Mbulaeni Mulaudzi (RSA), Joseph Mutua (KEN) and William Yiampoy (KEN). Last winter the Stockholm race (won by Borzakovskiy) was the top 800m of the indoor season and the ambitions of the athletes are not any lower this year.

On the women’s side the 1500m should also be able to provide excellent times. Britain’s Kelly Holmes and runners like Alesya Turova (BLR), Hayley Tullett (GBR) and Judit Varga (HUN) have all proven capable of dipping under the current World leading mark of 4:07.9, with a resurging Andrea Suldesova (CZE) perhaps also getting in the mix?

The straightaway will be occupied mainly by the two simultaneous High Jump competitions with only two hurdle races “interfering”. Both races feature two Paris top eight finishers as inspiration for Sweden’s 2003 World Indoor finalists: In the men’s race Marcio de Souza and Yoel Hernandez will be up against Robert Kronberg and in the women’s Aurelia Trywianska and Lacena Golding-Clarke will be facing Susanna Kallur.