MADRID, 20 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Spanish athletes Adel Mechaal, in 3,000 metres, and Ana Peleteiro, in triple jump, finished seventh and eighth, respectively, in their finals at the Belgrade Indoor World Championships, on a day in which the men’s 4×400 m relay won the pass to the final and in which the Venezuelan Yulimar Rojas smashed the triple jump indoor world record.
Mechaal, European distance record holder, fought to the end for the medals in the 3,000 meter final; In a slow race, which passed the 2000 in 5:15, the Catalan was in the leading group, but gave in on the last lap to the rush of the Ethiopians Selemon Barega and Lamecha Girma, first and second respectively.
Thus, he stopped the clock in 7:43.60, a second and a half off the podium, but could not improve on the fifth place achieved in the World Indoor Championships four years ago in Birmingham (United Kingdom).
For her part, the Olympic bronze medalist Ana Peleteiro was unable to revalidate the bronze of the English event and was eighth in a final in which she made three jumps over 14 meters -two of them surpassing the previous best Spanish mark of the season -.
The Galician started the contest with 14.30 meters and later failed to overcome the barrier of 14 meters and a half that gave rise to the fight for the medals. On her second attempt she went as far as 14.08 meters, before making a null which she repeated on the fifth. The 14.25 of the fourth jump and the 13.60 of the sixth were not enough to get into the fight.
The great protagonist of the competition at the Stark Arena was the Venezuelan Yulimar Rojas, current Olympic champion, who, with gold already guaranteed, waited until the last jump to sign a spectacular mark of 15.74, 31 centimeters better than the previous record ‘indoor’ and seven than the absolute.
THE 4X400 PASSES TO THE FINAL AND ASIER MARTÍNEZ, TO ‘SEMIS’ IN 60 M HURDLES
Meanwhile, the Spanish men’s 4×400 meter relay, made up of Bruno Hortelano, Iñaki Canal, Manuel Guijarro and Bernat Erta, guaranteed passage to the final after winning their heat in the heats with a time of 3:06.98 -third best mark Spanish in history, and the best made since the record of Spain of Glasgow 2019 (3:06.32)-.
Hortelano finished first in the first post (46.87), ahead of three-time world champion Pavel Maslak, and Canal, Guijarro and Erta defended Spain’s lead in the race. Now, they will face Belgium and the Netherlands, the winners of the other two series, and Poland, Great Britain and the Czech Republic in the final.
The women’s 4x400m relay, made up of Sara Gallego, Geena Stephens, Carmen Avilés and Laura Bueno, will not be in the final after finishing fifth in the first series with a time of 3:34.92, which despite everything is the second best mark Spanish in history and the fastest in the last 31 years since the Spanish record of 3:31.86 in the 1991 World Cup in Seville.
Finally, the Spanish champion of 60 meters hurdles Asier Martínez sealed his pass by time to the semifinals of the modality, while Enrique Llopis was eliminated in this first round.
The Navarrese finished his series fourth with a time of 7.67, achieving the ticket to the next round with the fifteenth fastest time of all the participants. The Valencian, who suffered a sprained ankle the Sunday before traveling to Belgrade, was sixth in his race (7.76).