Britain’s Daryll Neita opened her outdoor campaign in earnest with a barnstorming victory over 200m at the Diamond League meeting in Suzhou, China on Saturday (27).
Munich 2022 European Athletics Championships 100m bronze medallist took the scalp of reigning World 100m champion Sha’Carri Richardson as she clocked 22.62 (0.2m/s) to take victory. Richardson was back in third in 23.11 while fellow American Anavia Battle was second in 22.99.
Mondo sails over six metres
It was always going to be a huge ask for Mondo Duplantis to improve on his world record-breaking feats from a week earlier in Xiamen.
Nonetheless, the crowd-pleasing Swede made three bold attempts at a gravity-defying 6.25m, one centimetre above last week’s world best. In the end, he settled for the victory and yet another six-metre clearance of 6.00m, the 79th time he's gone over that benchmark or better.
“To jump six metres today and complete a very successful tour, I have a lot of good takeaways,” he told worldathletics.org. “I felt a little bit flat today, but still really good. Conditions have to be perfect for me to jump a world record and I wasn't quite feeling it off the runway tonight. Now I go back home and train for a few weeks until my next competition in Ostrava.”
So close 😮💨@mondohoss600 almost breaks his own pole vault world record in Suzhou.
— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) April 27, 2024
6.00m for the world and Olympic champ today 💪
📸 @matthewquine #DiamondLeague pic.twitter.com/7SxjX2cciV
It promises to be another massive year for Mondo with Paris 2024 and the Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships on the horizon.
Two-time European champion (Amsterdam 2016 and Berlin 2018) Gesa Felicitas Krause clocked her fastest 3000m steeplechase since 2021. The German was third in 9:16.24, in a high quality race won by Kenya’s former World Champion Beatrice Chepkoech in 9:07.36.
Hauttekeete wins in Italy
At the Multistars event in Bescia, Italy – a World Athletics Combined Events Tour Gold meeting – there was a fine victory in the men’s decathlon by Belgium’s Jente Hauttekeete.
A European U20 and World U20 gold medallist, the 22-year-old is now making his mark at senior level, underscored by an eighth-place finish in the heptathlon at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow in March.
Consistency was key for Hauttekeete, who didn’t win any individual event, but scored solidly throughout the ten disciplines. It all added up to his second best score ever of 8075 points.
He also landed a new javelin best of 56.04m. Estonia’s European Indoor heptathlon bronze medallist Risto Lillemets and France’s Téo Bastien completed an all-European podium with 7971 and 7963 respectively.
Ireland’s Kate O’Connor finished runner-up for the third time at Multistars as she scored 6104, 226 points short of winner Taliyah Brooks (USA) and 22 points ahead of Katelyn Adel of Switzerland in third.
Chris Broadbent for European Athletics