With a great meeting Birmingham takes 2nd spot
As expected, the Birmingham Aviva Indoor Grand Prix offered a great experience to the crowd offering excellent fields end results. Several victories of the British athletes made sure the spectators went home happy.
The level of the participants and the performances resulted that the meeting is currently 2nd in the ‘competition of the competitions’, as you can see in the Competition Evaluations (Indoor competitions section), overtaking Karlsruhe and Valencia. The leader is still the Stuttgart indoor meeting.
Mo Farah pleased the home crowd with an impressive 3000m victory in a new national indoor record of 7:34.37 minutes, defeating Shadrack Korir of Kenya by some four seconds.
Simeon Williamson of Great Britain won a fast men's 60 metres race in 6.53 seconds.
Reigning Olympic and world 400m champion Christine Ohuruogu raced and won in the shorter one-lap distance against Donna Fraser who has just taken the 200/400m titles in the UK Indoor Championships.
"It's great to be back and support the sport and give something back," said Ohuruogu after the race.
The women's 800m resulted a British 1-2-3 with Marilyn Okoro and Jennifer Meadows fighting each other into excellent sub 2 minutes performances.
Olympic and world pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva of Russia could not fulfil her promise to set another world record; still won the meeting with 4.82 metres.
Dexter Faulk won a US private affair in the men's 60m hurdles in 7.54, with Americans taking the first four positions. Only three hundreds of a second separate the winner from the fourth finisher David Oliver with David Payne (2nd) and Joel Brown (3rd) splitting them.
Tyler Christopher of Canada took the men's 400m in 46.08 seconds. Olympic champion Wilfried Bungei of Kenya won a close battle against his countryman Richard Kiplagat.
In the men's High jump Andra Manson of the USA (2.31m) defeated pre-meeting favourite controversially famous Russian Ivan Ukhov.Cuban David Giralt was the only triple jumper to go over 17m this time.
Vivain Cheruiyot of Kenya demonstrated her great form winning the 3000m in 8:30.53, leaving the other runners way behind. Maryam Yusuf Jamal of Bahrain had no real opposition as she won the 1500m in 4:02.74 minutes.
The women's 60m hurdles race was an easy homework for Lolo Jones of the USA, who despite not having any challenge still managed to perform a very fast 7.82 winning time. “There are still one or two things I can see that need tightening up,” she said. “It’s good though because I can see there’s room for improvement.”
Carmelita Jeter of the USA took the victory in the women’s 60m dash in 7.11 seconds.
IAAF website. Read report
BBC Sport. Read report
Click on the Competition name below to see the results of the meeting.
