Sopot Flash Back! Top results, Relays, WR, Father and son, by Alfons Juck

Top Performance: Global: Ashton Eaton, photo by PhotoRun.net

Best Performance, European: Pavel Maslak, photo by PhotoRun.net

Alfons Juck prognosticates on our three days in Sopot, Poland. Best performances? World Records? We have them all!

Also, hats off to the local organizers of the 2014 World Indoors. The ERGO arena was perfect, our seats were the best we have had in a world indoors, and the area had reasonable hotels, great and inexpensive food, and very nice locals. We would come back to POLAND for an event anyday!

SOPOT FLASH BACK

TOP RESULTS (by All-Athletics.com): Ashton Eaton heptathlon scored 1487 points ahead of 4×400 US 1464 and Ryan Whiting shot put 22.05 is the third best mark (1443) on the men side. Top European result was the 45.24 by Pavel Maslak in the 400 m as overall 6th best (1425) just ahead of 6.49 in the 60 m by Richard Kilty (1415 points). On the women side Abeba Aregawi has the top mark from the 1500 m worth of 1423 points ahead of Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce 60 m worth 1420 points and Nadine Broersen pentathlon third best with 1419 points.

RELAYS: Fantastic run by Kseniya Ryzhova on the anchor for Russia to clock 49.83 when she was trying to catch Ohuruogu for the bronze, is the fastest ever split by a woman, replacing Natalya Nazarova’s 49.89 from 2004. Top male split was 45.14 by Calvin Smith who anchored the US
winners. Winners splits: Clemons 46.10, Verburg 45.46, Butler 45.43 and Smith 45.14. Women: Hastings 51.89, Atkins 50.91, McCorory 50.33 and Tate 51.70.

WORLD RECORD: There is faster US time in 4×400 m 3:01.96 achieved in Fayetteville in February 2006 (Clement, Spearmon, Williamson, Wariner) but was never ratified due to insufficient doping control.

FATHER AND SON: Calvin Smith father (100 m 9.93 in 1983) and son (relay in Sopot) are now the first in such relationship being official world record holders.

TOP CHAMPIONSHIPS: In the All-Athletics.com scoring Sopot is the third best World Indoor Championships after 2000. The final score is 48 295 points bettered only by Budapest 2004 (48 604) and Istanbul 2012 (48 423).

JENN SUHR: The Olympic winner 2012 played a passing game in the women’s pole vault, clearing 465 on her first attempt of the competition. Suhr passed at 470 before missing three times at 475 to end up in a tie for fifth. “This basically sums up my season. I’ve been off all season but I just started figuring things out. It’s heartbreaking and I haven’t really processed it yet,” she says for USATF website.

Larry Eder

Larry Eder has had a 50-year involvement in the sport of athletics. Larry has experienced the sport as an athlete, coach, magazine publisher, and now, journalist and blogger. His first article, on Don Bowden, America's first sub-4 minute miler, was published in RW in 1983. Larry has published several magazines on athletics, from American Athletics to the U.S. version of Spikes magazine. He currently manages the content and marketing development of the RunningNetwork, The Shoe Addicts, and RunBlogRun. Of RunBlogRun, his daily pilgrimage with the sport, Larry says: "I have to admit, I love traveling to far away meets, writing about the sport I love, and the athletes I respect, for my readers at runblogrun.com, the most of anything I have ever done, except, maybe running itself." Theme song: Greg Allman, " I'm no Angel."

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