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| Germany's Verena Sailer and Myriam Soumare of France will vie for the 60m title at the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Paris next March. |
The 2011 European Athletics Championships will be held at the Palais Omnisport Paris-Bercy between March 4-6.
Sailer is already back in full training and has been preparing for several weeks in Cyprus.
“It was crazy after Barcelona because so many people wanted to talk to me, and there were so many presentations, but now I am focussing on new goals and preparing in peace,” said Sailer.
One of Salier’s targets for the winter is to reduce her 60m personal best of 7.17, set in the semi-finals of the last European Athletics Indoor Championships in 2009.
She went on to finish third in Torino behind Russia’s Yevgeniya Polyakova, who is also expected to be in Paris to defend her title after recovering from the injury she suffered at the Russian national championships in July, which ended her season.
Sailer’s first races in 2011 should be at the Aviva International Match in Glasgow on January 29. She will also compete at the BW-Bank meeting in Karlsruhe, and IAAF Indoor Permit Meeting, on February 13th.
Soumaré not only won the longer sprint in Barcelona but also took the bronze medal, behind Sailer and her French team mate Véronique Mang, in the 100m.
“I’ve already forget my previous season but I’m not thinking about the coming outdoor one just yet. I’m just thinking about the indoors at the moment,” said Soumaré who, like all the top French athletes, is very motivated to doing well in front of a home audience next March.
“I have also forgotten my 7.19 (60m) personal best set last winter, I just want to surpass myself and do crazy things on the track,” she added.
Like Sailer, Soumaré expects to start her indoor season in late January, probably at a meeting in Bordeaux on January 29.