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News01 Mar 1999


Mutola aims for her fourth successive gold in Maebashi

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Mutola aims for her fourth indoor gold in Maebashi

1 March 1999 - Monte Carlo  - Few of the spectators who watched Mozambique’s Maria Mutola running with a black ribbon attached to her vest at the last World Indoor Championships in Paris were unmoved when she dedicated her win to her father who had been killed in a car crash just weeks before. Now, she will be going for her fourth consecutive gold in Maebashi and it is a brave bookmaker who would lay odds against Mutola achieving that goal.

Mutola’s sights will not only be on gold in Maebashi. With her confidence bolstered by her recent world record in the 1000m in Stockholm of 2:30.94 (currently awaiting ratification), bettering the record mark she had set in the same stadium exactly two years before, the sturdy Mozambican powerhouse will be aspiring to finally demolish the indoor record of 1:56.40, which has belonged to Christine Wachtel (DDR) for the past eleven years. Mutola clocked 1:56.36 in 1998, but saw her time disallowed for stepping onto the infield on the final bend.

So who can break Maria Lurdes Mutola’s winning streak indoors? The 26-year-old hasn’t lost a race under cover since winning her first world indoor title back in 1993 and has not been seriously challenged so far this season. She owns the top two places in the 1999 IAAF indoor lists for the 1000m and the three fastest times for the 800m.

The strongest competition looks likely to come from the Czech Republic, in the shape of 25-year-old Ludmila Formanova, a pupil of 800m world outdoor record holder Jarmila Kratochvilová. Formanova trails Mutola in the 800m indoor rankings for the year, with a best mark of 1:58.78, her personal best, set in Stuttgart on 7 February. But this is 1.72 seconds off Mutola’s season best of 1:57.06 and not a lot better than the 1:59 800m split the Mozambican recorded on the way to her 1000m record in Stockholm.

Next best-placed in the 800m line-up will be Natalya Tsyganova from Russia, but once again, this 28-year-old is still some way off the pace which is going to be needed to head off Mutola’s title ambitions – her best performance this season was 1:58.95 in Budapest. Stephanie Graf from Austria came in behind Mutola in Liévin and could well put on an extra spurt in Maebashi, but she is more likely to spur Mutola to greater things than to pose a serious threat.

The biggest problem Mutola will face, in her own opinion, will be jet lag: "Japan will be tough," she said after her record win in Stockholm. "There will be so many races and with the jet lag it will be even tougher."

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