Friedrich defeats Vlašić at 2.05; Karlsruhe is 2nd best

The crowd of the Karlsruhe Europahalle witnessed a superb battle between Ariane Friedrich and Blanka Vlašić, as the meeting took the 2nd place among the indoor competitions in 2009.

The Croatian has now her 41st consecutive 2m mark at her name, but even a 2.05 clearance was not enough to win this time.

The German jumped two personal bests and won the competition on countback.

“The only chance to defeat Blanca was to try something different,” said Friedrich. “By passing so many heights until 2.00, forced her to take many consecutive attempts. I really wanted to win, and I knew 2.03 would not be enough.”

Among the several excellent other results there were two world leading performances.

Elisa Cusma broke the Italian indoor record in 1:59.25 and set the best time of the season on the distance, upsetting Ukrainian Tetyana Petlyuk.

Lolo Jones frightened the fans with her crash in Düsseldorf, but just two days later she sprinted a 7.82 sec to better the world leading mark of the season.

“Let’s not talk about Düsseldorf”, she said after the race. “I think it was a bit of the ‘fear factor’ today that made me go faster.”

As a result of the level of the participants and the performances the Karlsruhe BW-Bank-Meeting is ranked second among the indoor competitions. Stuttgart Sparkassen-Cup is on the top spot.

IAAF website. Read report

Leichtathletik.de.  Read report in German 

You can see the full rankings in our Competition Evaluations section

Photos from Karlsruhe are in the All-Athletics Photos section.

Results of the meeting can be reached by clicking on the competition name below.