25th February 2011 06:38
Croatia’s team for the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Paris next week will consist of four men and four women.
Men - Dario Horvat (60m), Jurica Grabusic (60m hurdles), Nedzad Mulabegovic (shot put) and Tomislav Popek (high jump); women - Sandra Parlov (60m), Anita Banovic (400m) Andrea Ivancevic (60m hurdles) and Ana Simic (high jump) .
The country’s biggest star, the 2010 European Athlete of the Year Blanka Vlašić is not competing during the indoor season in order to concentrate on outdoor events during the summer.
Croatia is looking for it’s first European Athletics Indoor Championships medal since Branko Zorko finished second in the 1994 men’s 1500m.
Curiously, the European Athletics Indoor Championships is the only major global or continental championship at which Vlašić has never been on the podium, having finished fourth and then fifth at the last two editions.
Hungary will send a six-strong team to the French capital with the former SPAR European Cross Country Championships junior and under 23 men’s winner Barnabás Bene perhaps their best bet to end a medal drought which extends back to 2002, when Dóra Gyorffy won a silver medal in the women’s high jump.
Bene is entered in both the 1500m and 3000m but his better chances probably lie at the longer distance. He won at the XL Galan meeting in Stockholm on Tuesday, his only outing over 15 laps of the track this winter.
Another Hungarian runner to watch, even if he may be out of the medals on this occasion, is the 19-year-old 400m runner Marcell Deak Nagy, who set a national junior indoor record of 47.01 earlier this month.
Deak Nagy won the silver medal at the World Junior Championships last summer and is the long distance favourite for the 400m title at the European Junior Championships in Tallinn, Estonia, this summer.
The other three men in the Hungary team is: Tamas Kazi (800m), Balazs Baji (60m hurdles) and Lajos Kurthy (shot put). The one female athlete who will be wearing a Hungary vest in Paris is shot putter Anita Marton.
The 2011 European Athletics Indoor Championships will be held at the Palais Omnisport Paris-Bercy from 4-6 March.