Lyukman Adams in the triple jump at the 2014 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Sopot (© Getty Images)
Russia’s Lyukman Adams improved on his bronze medal in Istanbul two years ago to snatch the gold in Sopot with a world-leading 17.37m in the sixth and final round.
Adams stole the gold medal from under the nose of Cuba’s Ernesto Reve by four centimetres with the penultimate jump of the competition, with the latter frustratingly unable to respond as he was having to watch the competition on TV in the Ergo Arena treatment room after injuring a leg in the third round.
The 22-year-old 2010 world junior silver medallist collected his second major medal of that hue with 17.33m in only his third indoor competition ever, ahead of his team-mate and training partner Pedro Pablo Pichardo, who took the bronze with 17.24m.
The Cuban pair’s only previous indoor competitions have been in Prague and Metz last week.
Pichardo, just 20 but the world silver medallist and world junior champion, unleashed his farthest jump in the final round to push Romania’s 2004 Olympic silver medallist Marian Oprea into fourth position by three centimetres.
The 31-year-old’s bad luck, and lack of a medal, in this championship thus continued, having finished fourth, fifth and sixth in three of his five previous appearances.
Poland’s Karol Hoffman couldn’t emulate his father, the 1983 world champion outdoors, but still finished a highly satisfactory fifth with 16.89m.
Nicola Bamford for the IAAF
