Laura Frličková of Slovakia electrified the home fans on Thursday evening at the European Athletics U18 Championships in Banska Bystrica by storming to a European U18 best in the 100m hurdles.
With a technically outstanding run of 12.86 (+2.0), the main home hope for gold and the current global U18 leader responded to the occasion, shaving 0.12 off of Cyréna Samba-Mayela’s seven-year-old record.
Her performance also placed her second on the global all-time U18 lists over the 76.2cm barriers, trailing only the world U20 gold winner Kerrica Hill of Jamaica with her personal best of 12.71 from 2022. She now has a full 0.50 advantage over the other qualifiers for Friday’s semi-finals, and she is a strong favorite to win gold in the final tomorrow.
“I was surprised by that,” she later said. “My goal was to qualify for the semifinals with a reasonable time, perhaps in the PB under 13.10 seconds.” It was never even in my dreams to get under 13 seconds, much less 12.9 seconds.
“I think I can achieve another outstanding outcome in the semifinals. I had no idea that I would run away from girls so quickly from the beginning. My intention was to slow down before finishing, but I decided to press through to the very end since I felt terrific and the females were far away.
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