Nadia Battocletti opened her outdoor season with victory in the 1500m at the Pegaso Meeting in Florence, a World Athletics Continental Tour Challenger meeting, on Saturday (9).
After following the pacemaker through 800m in 2:11.3, Battocletti forged on for a solo victory in 4:03.75, winning by more than 12 seconds.
Battocletti has outlined her principal goal in the first half of the summer campaign is to challenge Sifan Hassan’s European 5000m record of 14:13.42 on home soil in Rome on 4 June on the same track where the Italian won 5000m and 10,000m gold at the 2024 European Athletics Championships.
Fellow European champion Leonardo Fabbri was also a winner in the shot put. The 29-year-old, who was born on the outskirts of Florence and considers the Luigi Ridolfi Stadium his home track, landed his best throw of the meeting with 21.43m in the sixth round.
World 200m silver medallist Amy Hunt won the 100m in 11.17 against a strong headwind of 1.5 m/s and fellow Brit Jemma Reekie won the 800m in 2:01.26.
Spain’s David Barroso won the men’s 800m in a fast early season time of 1:44.56 while 18-year-old Alessandro Casoni made a huge improvement in fourth, taking his lifetime best from 1:48.55 to 1:46.59 to break the Italian U20 record.
However, the best performance of the day arguably came from South Africa’s Zakhiti Nene who won the men’s 400m in 44.44.