The European Indoor Championship started well for the Irish in Ghent, Belgium today. 200 metres sprinter Ciara Sheehy lowered the Irish record she set this morning by a further 100th of a second to 23.92 seconds when finishing fifth of five in her 200m semi-final. She had finished third in her heat and qualified as a fastest loser.
James Nolan maintained the Irish challenge as he finished third in his men's 1500m heat to progress to tomorrow's final with a time of 3:41.90. Gareth Turnbull carved over a second off his personal best, stopping the clock at 3:42.97 in an earlier race, but just missed out on a place in the decider.
Karen Shinkins and Sinead Delahunty gave Ireland a double boost. Shinkins qualified for tomorrow's semi-final of the 400m after comfortably finishing third in her heat in 53.20 seconds. Delahunty will also be in action tomorrow after finishing second in her 1500m first round, clocking four minutes 13.94secs.
Meanwhile, Russian Ruslan Mashchenko's reign as European indoor 400 metres champion came to a shuddering halt when he suffered a hamstring injury. Mashchenko, title winner in Valencia, Spain, two years ago pulled up halfway through his preliminary round.
Russia's 18-year-old 800 metres prospect Yuri Borzakovsky was the fastest in the heats over four laps of the indoor arena. Most of the favourites progressed safely through their heats but another prominent casualty was Greece's former world indoor 200 metres champion Ekaterini Koffa.
German pentathlete Karin Ertl took the first gold medal of the championships with a personal best performance. Ertl amassed 4,671 points in the five events to improve on her 1998 bronze. The army officer clocked 8.31 seconds to win the 60 meters hurdles first event of the day, and was never headed. Russia's Irina Vostrikova came through strongly in the last three events to take silver with 4,615 points, relegating Poland's 1998 champion Urzula Wlodarczyk to third on 4,590.
