Francesco Fortunato in action at the Italian Indoor Championships (© Chiara Montesano)
European bronze medallist Francesco Fortunato took almost 13 seconds off the world short track record* when winning the 5000m race walk in 17:54.48 at the Italian Indoor Championships in Ancona on Saturday (28).
The Italian race walker had clocked 17:55.65 at these championships last year, but the performance was not ratified due to a technical judging issue, meaning Mikhail Shchennikov’s 18:07.08 clocking from 1995 remained the ratified world short track record.
“I’m satisfied with myself,” said Fortunato. “I came here to try again and I didn’t give up. After the disappointment last year, I felt this was a record I deserved.”
Elsewhere, European indoor champion Larissa Iapichino won the women’s long jump with 6.78m and Gabriele Chilà won the men’s event with 8.00m. 2021 Olympic champion Antonella Palmisano claimed the women’s 3000m race walk title in 11:56.74.
*Subject to the usual ratification procedure
Karalis vaults 6.17m at Greek Indoor Championships
On a busy weekend of national indoor championships action, Emmanouil Karalis was another standout performer.
The world and Olympic medallist cleared 6.17m at the Greek Indoor Championships in Paiania to move to second on the world all-time list.
He cleared the height on his second attempt, and then raised the bar to 6.31m and had two ambitious attempts at a would-be world record. He now sits behind only world record-holder Mondo Duplantis on the world all-time list.
The Greek star is set to face Duplantis for the first time this season at the Mondo Classic meeting in Uppsala on 12 March, ahead of the World Athletics Indoor Championships Kujawy Pomorze 26 later that month.
Yemisi Ogunleye produced the early stand-out performance at the German Indoor Championships in Dortmund.
The Olympic shot put champion threw an outright PB of 20.37m to win the title by almost two metres from Katharina Maisch. Ogunleye's mark is an improvement of 10cm on her previous best, set at last year's German Indoor Championships. It puts her second on this year's world list behind world champion Jessica Schilder (20.49m).
More to follow...
