Hungary’s Attila Molnar produced a big breakthrough in the 400m at the Czech Indoor Gala in Ostrava, a World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold meeting, on Tuesday (4) evening.
Molnar stormed to victory in a world lead and Hungarian record of 45.08, threatening the European record of 45.05 which is jointly held by former East German Thomas Schonlebe and Norway’s Karsten Warholm.
The 23-year-old, who won bronze at the 2023 European Athletics U23 Championships, wasn’t too far outside his outright national record of 44.84 which he set on home soil at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest.
In the women’s 400m, Lieke Klaver from the Netherlands opened her season with a world-leading time of 50.92 which was the fastest time across the two races.
In the first race, Poland’s European champion and Olympic bronze medallist Natalia Bukowiecka pulled up injured in the first 100 metres.
European indoor U20 record for FitzGerald
Double European U20 cross country champion Innes FitzGerald from Great Britain obliterated the European indoor U20 record in the 3000m.
The 18-year-old, who was making her international debut indoors, finished fourth in 8:40.05 to slice more than 10 seconds off Sofia Thøgersen’s previous record of 8:50.26 set last year.
FitzGerald also goes to ninth on the world indoor U20 all-time list with the top 10 otherwise filled exclusively by Ethiopian athletes.
Elsewhere on the track, in-form Eliott Crestan won the 800m in a Belgian indoor record of 1:44.69, just missing the world lead by 0.04, while Luxembourg’s Patrizia Van Der Weken continued her excellent start to the year by edging out Poland’s double Roma 2024 European Athletics Championships silver medallist Ewa Swoboda in the 60m, 7.08 to 7.09.
It was also a successful evening for Italian athletes. Mattia Furlani landed a jump of 8.23m to win the long jump and equal the world lead while reigning European indoor champion Zane Weir won the shot put with a world lead of 21.39m.
Reigning European outdoor champion Leonardo Fabbri had to settle for fifth on his season’s debut with 20.65m.