1st March 2012 08:48
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| European indoor 400m champion Denisa Rosolova of the Czech Republic. |
Despite being disqualified from the 60m at the recent Birmingham National Indoor Arena grand prix (“they held us too long, I just wanted to get going”) he was animated looking forward to the 21st European Athletics Championships that will be held in the Finnish capital from 27 June to 1 July.
“There are more possibilities for us in Helsinki than at the Olympic Games. The Olympic Games are a dream, of course, but we have limited chances there. In London we will focus on the relay,” he said.
After all his injury problems, Blum affirmed that he has been pain-free since the autumn and he is hoping that continues until Helsinki and beyond.
“I will run some 200m races for training, but the main focus will be on the 100m in Helsinki this summer,” he said.
Another athlete who has Helsinki in her sights was Birmingham 800m surprise winner, Angelika Cichocka of Poland.
“At the European championships in Barcelona, I was disappointed because I had an Achilles tendon problem so I am looking forward to getting to Helsinki in good shape to make up for that.”
In the Catalan capital, the Polish 800m/1500m champion went out in the heats, but after convincingly beating last year’s world number one at 1500m, Morgan Uceny of the USA, over two laps in Birmingham, Cichocka expects much more in Helsinki.
“I will have to be in very good shape this summer,” she said.
Denisa Rosolova has not yet decided with her coach how the 2012 season will pan out, but she thinks she may well double at the 200m and 400m this summer.
For the European Athletics Championships in Helsinki, it could be that she will concentrate on the shorter distance. But the decision has yet to be made.
In Birmingham, the Czech champion set a season’s best in the longer distance of 52.44 and after the problems she had last summer, she was relieved to see that she was on the mend.
“I lost six kilograms last summer because I had hormonal problems,” she explained before she left the mixed zone for her warm-down.
“The 2011 outdoor season was very hard.”
Rosolova failed to progress beyond the 400m semis at the IAAF World Championships in Daegu last August, but she is expecting an improvement this summer.
“After the World indoor championships in Istanbul, I am going to train in South Africa with Zuzana Hejnova (400m hurdler) and then we are going up to St Moritz,” she explained.
In Barcelona two years ago, Rosolova was out of the medals in fifth, but in the following indoor season she improved dramatically to lift the European indoor gold at the Bercy track in Paris.
But then illness intervened to scupper her summer season.