Sofia Santacreu of Spain retained her title by winning the women’s 10,000m race walk at the Tampere 2025 European Athletics U20 Championships on Saturday (9), setting a new world lead and a national U20 record of 43:47.89 in a perfectly judged race.
Tampere 2025 is being live streamed on the European Athletics website courtesy of Eurovision Sport.
Gold came down to a duel between Santacreu and Italy’s Serena di Fabio, the 5000m race walk winner from last year’s European Athletics U18 Championships in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia.
Di Fabio had led from the halfway point when a lead group of eight crumbled and left just the Italian and Spaniard up front. Santacreu stuck closely to Di Fabrio and with 600 metres to go, she made her move and surged clear, stretching further clear with every stride to the finish.
Di Fabio was also rewarded with a national U20 record of 43:56.25 for silver and another Spaniard, Aldara Meilán took bronze in a personal best of 44:15.89.
"Actually, I was not very confident coming to this race," admitted Santacreu afterwards. "I was very nervous. I knew that all girls were going to be very strong. But I tried to keep calm knowing I trained well and felt in shape. I felt very well during the race and I think it went very fast from the beginning.
"We tried to stay there until the end and I think we managed it well. I am very glad for setting the national record because I really enjoyed training for these championships. It was like a gift for me this season. I feel very emotional at the moment. 10km is a long distance so it is better to stay with someone to make a team, to cooperate.
"At the end, we saw that some girls were getting tired, so I tried to stay there and win it. My family is there with my coach and I was listnening to them during the race. Comparing to the championships before, this was a different race because the competition is much higher. In Jerusalem (2023), I was going almost 46 minutes and today, it is almost 2 minutes difference, which is a lot."
Halfway break was critical
In cool conditions with a slight wind, a front group of eight athletes quickly formed within the opening two laps in the Ratina Stadium. They were led by France’s Chloe le Roch, who was 8th at the 2024 World U20 Championships.
Also, in the lead group were her French teammate Marine Merbitz, Santacreu and fellow Spaniards Meilán and Claudia Ventura, di Fabio, Serbia’s Mina Stankovic and Romania’s Alessia Cristina Pop.
Le Roch led the pack for the opening kilometres, only conceding the lead just before halfway were di Fabio took over in front. It was a critical juncture in the race which saw firstly Pop and them Marbitz’s challenges fade as they lost touch with the leaders.
At the 6k mark, le Roch also paid the price for shouldering the leadership burden and she too was cut adrift from the leaders. With eight laps and 3.2k left to cover, Di Fabio and Santacreu pulled clear of the rest to go head to head for victory over the closing laps.
22 Personal Bests in quality race
A similar battle was building behind them for bronze between Stankovic and Meilán, as Ventura also dropped away. It was a battle Meilán won, shaking off Stankovic with 1k left to go.
But the Serbian did at least set a new national record of 44:35:66 in fourth. Ventura rallied for fifth and a new personal best of 44:43.01, whilst Le Roch’s committed effort gleaned a French U20 record of 45:08.59 in fifth.
There were a total of 22 personal bests from the field with seventh-placed Theresia Emma Mohr also setting a Austrian U20 record of 45:13.07.