MADRID, 19 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish athlete Marta Pérez finished this Monday in eleventh position in the final of the 1,500 meters of the World Athletics Championships that are being held in Eugene (United States), while Claudia Conte, in heptathlon, and Dani Arce, in the 3,000 obstacles, brushed the finalist position.
Marta Pérez, in a new international grand final after the Tokyo Olympics last summer, could not be the protagonist in a race that was run at a very high pace from the beginning because of the Ethiopian Gudaf Tsegay.
This formed a first group and commanded the race until the final 200 meters where the Kenyan Faith Kipyegon changed pace and took the lead to head for the gold medal with a time of 3:52.96. The silver went to Tsegay (3:54.52) and the bronze to Britain’s Laura Muir (3:55.28).
For her part, the soriana tried to fight at all times for the top positions, but had to settle for finishing eleventh with a time of 4:04.25, only one second worse than her semifinal mark.
In the 3,000 meter steeplechase, there was a double Spanish presence for the first time in the last 15 years with Sebastián Martos and Dani Arce. The first tried from the beginning to be in the leading positions along with the big favorites and with a little scare at having to dodge at one point a television cameraman who was in the middle of the street.
Martos could not hold out among the best and was descending positions, although with three laps to go he rose again in search of increasing his chances of being among the top eight. The change of rhythm of the applicants occurred with two laps to go and the Spaniard could not hold out, unlike Arce who went from less to more throughout the test and who with 300 meters to go was in an excellent sixth place.
The man from Burgos was also unable to maintain his pace in the final stretch and finally finished in a brilliant ninth place with a time of 8:30.05. Martos finished in fourteenth position (8:36.66) in a final that crowned the Moroccan Soufiane El Bakkali (8:25.13), who revalidated the title ahead of the Ethiopian Lamecha Girma (8:26.01) and the Kenyan Conseslus Kipruto (8:27.92). ).
Finally, in the women’s heptathlon, the national participation of this fourth day in Eugene was completed with Claudia Conte, who confirmed her progress with a positive ninth place with a total of 6,194 points, being the best performance of a Spanish woman in history.
The combinera, who was sixth last March at the Cubiera World Cup in Belgrade, could not come close to the Spanish record held by María Vicente with 6,304 points, but she did achieve her personal best by eight points. The Belgian Nafissatou Thiam (6,947), the Dutch Anouk Vetter (6,867) and the American Anna Hall (6,755) formed the podium.