Colin Jackson salutes Crystal palace Crowd (© Getty Images)
Glasgow, UKA number of Europe’s top athletes will make their first appearances of the indoor season in the Norwich Union International at Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall on this Sunday, 2 February.
This five way international - Britain, Russia, Sweden, Italy and a European select team - as well as having a strong host team that features Jonathan Edwards, Colin Jackson and Jason Gardener, sees Svetlana Feofanova included in the Russian line up, and Europe boasting the appearances of Zhanna Block and Jolanda Ceplak.
Yet much of the interest of this meeting will be focused, not so much on early season form, but on the sport’s new false start rule which gets its first public trial in Britain at this international.
UK Athletics has specially trained an “elite group” of officials for all its televised meetings this season to ensure it is introduced as smoothly as possible.
UKA’s chief executive David Moorcroft explained: “Any new rule change inevitably leads to some nervousness from athletes and we want to ease the fears for those competing in our events. Using the same pool of properly briefed, experienced officials throughout the introduction phase will play a major role in doing that.”
Britain’s sprint prodigy Mark Lewis-Francis, will compete over 60 metres with his main challenger in Glasgow being fellow-Briton Jason Gardener, who in retaining his continental sprint crown last year, beat him to the European indoor title.
The race will be the first stage of their World Indoor Championships selection battle, a contest in which European 100m champion Dwain Chambers is favourite to take first slot, although he has recently had to withdraw from two sprint races in the USA with a stress fracture.
Gardener, the European 60m record holder, has looked to boost his chances by training with Namibian sprint legend Frankie Fredericks and World record hurdler Colin Jackson.
However, that sprint clash is far from the only attraction of a fascinating match, which is packed with gold medallists from last year’s European championships and Commonwealth Games. Meeting director Ian Stewart has even suggested it is “fast becoming an unofficial indoor world team championship”.
While the Scottish crowd will be pleased to see Commonwealth champions such as Kelly Holmes and Michael East (both running 1500m), and long jumper Nathan Morgan in the British team, no doubt the loudest cheer will be reserved for Colin Jackson. The Welshman who holds the World indoor 60m Hurdles record, wins his 70th international vest on Sunday, making him the most capped British male athlete of all time, ahead of (1960s) pole vaulter and decathlete Mike Bull. The 35 year-old Jackson, who won his fourth European 110m Hurdles gold in Munich last summer has said this will be his “farewell season”.
Another British “old boy”, Jonathan Edwards, will renew his rivalry with Sweden’s Christian Olsson in the triple jump. Olsson stole Edwards’ European outdoor title last summer and has already leapt 17.14m this winter. With Italy’s Fabrizio Donato and Russia’s world bronze medallist Igor Spasovkhodskiy also in the line up, the World outdoor champion will need to be flying from the start.
The top star of the talented Russian team is pole vaulter Svetlana Feofanova, the women’s European outdoor record holder. She will face the current World indoor champion Pavla Hamackova of the Czech Republic (competing for the European team), although the event’s main interest could rest in whether the Russian can add to the five World indoor records she set last year.
The women’s European team includes athletes of the calibre of Ukraine’s world 100m champion Zhanna Block, running in the 60m, and Slovenia’s World Indoor record holder Jolanda Ceplak in the 800m; while the men’s includes Sweden’s European indoor champion Staffan Strand who’ll take on his countryman Stefan Holm and Russia’s Yaroslav Rybakov in the men’s high jump.
Matthew Brown for the IAAF
