On the second day of the Balkan Athletics Championships in Volos in Greece on Sunday (21), Türkiye brought the curtain down on the men’s track programme with victory in the 4x400m in a championship record.
The Turkish quartet which was anchored by Ismail Nezir stopped the clock at 3:03.04, breaking the previous championship record of 3:03.94 which was set by Yugoslavia at the 1988 edition in Ankara.
This was not just Nezir's second gold medal of the weekend but also his second championship record. He won the 400m hurdles title yesterday in 48.33 to rewrite the Balkan Championships record books.
Slovenia won the women's 4x400m title in 3:35.57.
Emmanouilidou pips Polat in the 200m
After finishing fourth in the 100m yesterday, Polyniki Emmanouilidou retained her 200m title on home soil in a super close finish.
Emmanouilidou was neck-and-neck with her Turkish rival Elif Polat down the home straight but the reigning champion kept her form and composure better in the last 10 metres and was rewarded with a narrow victory in 23.26, winning by just 0.01.
Emmanouilidou ensured a Greek double in the 200m finals after Sotirios Gkaragkanis won the men’s 200m title in 20.73 ahead of Türkiye’s Kubilay Encu who won the preceding race in 20.79, the second fastest time across the three races. He would later run the second leg of his country’s winning team in the 4x400m.
Other Greek winners on the second day in Volos included Dimitrios Tsitsos in the javelin with 78.68m and Angelos Tzanis Andreoglou in the decathlon with 7864 points.
Verman improves to 6.78m for long jump gold
European U23 champion Ramona Elena Verman won the women’s long jump title with a lifetime best of 6.78m, leading a Romanian one-two ahead of 2023 world bronze medallist Alina Rotaru-Kottmann who jumped 6.64m for silver.
There was also Romanian success in the men’s discus for Alin Alexandru Firfirica who threw 63.49m to win his eighth Balkan title.
Other field event highlights included Montenegro’s Marija Vukovic clearing 1.88m to win the women’s high jump and Ukraine’s Iryna Klymets winning the women’s hammer with 68.50m ahead of 45-year-old Yipsi Moreno, a three-time world champion, who improved her season’s best to 67.85m.
There was a big upset in the men's 3000m with Serbia's pre-race favourite Elzan Bibic only finishing third in 7:57.59 in a race won by Armenia's Yervand Mkrtchyan in a lifetime best and national record of 7:52.75.
Malta's Jared Micallef won the 800m title in 1:46.93 and Türkiye's Edibe Yagiz added the 5000m title to her 3000m title from yesterday, winning in an unopposed 16:17.50.
Tetyana Bilyk from Ukraine also won the heptathlon title with a lifetime best score of 6061 points, her first ever total in excess of the 6000 points-barrier.
