Posted: February 22, 2005

Athletics: Borzakovskiy Joins Bungei At The Top Of The 800M In The Latest IAAF World Rankings

Monte-Carlo - Only a week after surrendering his Event lead, Russia’s reigning Olympic champion Yuriy Borzakovskiy is back in first place of the Men’s 800m Event Ranking, although this time the 23-year-old is joined by Kenya’s Wilfred Bungei on equal points.

Borzakovskiy won in Stockholm in 1:46:10 (1297 points), a performance which turned out to be crucial. Had the Russian ran one hundredth of a second faster, he would be in sole possession of first place, but 1:46:10 was just not quick enough to overcome Bungei as the pair have 1352 points each, leading another Kenyan, William Yiampoy by 15 points.

Jamaica’s Davian Clarke produced a pair of strong performances over the past week. The 28-year-old kicked off his 400m indoor season in Stockholm where he won with 46.34 (1267 points). Only three days later he improved to sub-46, when winning again, this time in Birmingham with 45.90 (1296 points), which is the third fastest time of the year. Consequently, Clarke moved up in the Men’s 400m Event Ranking to 6th position, while Spain’s David Canal re-entered the Top 20 in 18th place. Canal set a national record on his way to winning the Spanish Championships. It was the first time Canal had ran under 46 seconds indoor, finishing in 45.93 (1234 points).

Another athlete with a solid week’s performance was Carolina Klüft. The 22-year-old Swede chose to Long Jump in Stockholm and Birmingham, winning both of her outings. In front of her home crowd Klüft took the honours with 6.59m (1206 points), then travelled to Birmingham where in 2003 she had won the World Indoor Pentathlon title, and was victorious again, with 6.66m (1221 points) on her very last jump. These results allowed Klüft to break the tie she had for 7th place with Jade Johnson of Great Britain in the Event Ranking. Johnson slipped back to 8th despite breaking her indoor personal best when finishing second to Klüft with 6.52m (1171 points) in Birmingham.

Ethiopia’s Tirunesh Dibaba also slipped back a few places from second to 5th in the Women’s 5 000m – 10 000m Event Ranking. The 19-year-old reigning World 5000m champion has not competed since setting the World Indoor 5000m record a few weeks ago in Boston. As a result, Dibaba’s second place performance from last year in Birmingham became out of date and she lost 22 points and dropped to 5th place.

By contrast her compatriot, Meseret Defar not only repeated her winning performance from last year’s Birmingham meet, she did even better. Defar won last year with 8:33.44 (1342 points) only to go half a second better this time around, crossing the line first with 8:33.05 (1344 points). The result allowed Defar to improve her score by a single point and with Dibaba dropping down, the reigning Olympic 5000m and World Indoor 3000m champion moved up to second, nine points behind Ejegaheyu Dibaba at the top of the Event Ranking.

IAAF.