Bydgoszcz athletics

Bydgoszcz in Poland hosted the 9th European Athletics Festival on June 10-11. Poland's Olympic and European indoor Shot Put champion, Tomasz Majewski (below), delighted the home crowd by winning the shot put gold. Majewski threw the put to a meet record 21.09m, while his closest competitor, American Reese Hoffa the reigning world champion, could manage 20.77m.



In the other field competitions, Polish Olympic medalist Piotr Malachowski lost in the Discus throw to Estonia's Gerd Kanter who reached 66.20m. In the Hammer throw event Krisztian Pars of Hungary beat Olympic champion Primoz Kozmus with a throw of 80.19m. Lukasz Michalski won the pole vault with a jump of 5.71m. Yelena Slesarenko won the women's high jump with 1.90m, while Anna Pyatykh took the triple jump with a meet record 14.41m.

In the track athletics events Poland's Marcin Lewandowski won the 800m race while Russian Yelena Zarudneva set a new world record in the 3000m steeple of 9:23.23. In a very tight 400m hurdles race, South African LJ Van Zyl managed to edge Briton David Greene by a split second after both clocked 48.71. Beijing silver-medal winner David Payne of the USA clocked 13.30 in the 110m hurdles. Kim Collins won the 100m in 10.48 seconds while Ireland´s Paul Hession won the 200m race.