Frenchwoman takes 200m gold

BARCELONA, Spain (AP):

Myriam Soumaire denied Russia’s women another gold medal when the Frenchwoman won the 200 metres at the European Championships yesterday.

Moments after teammate and 100 metre silver medalist Veronique Mang was disqualified for a false start, Soumaire surged to the front of the field from the outside lane to win the race in a European season’s best time of 22.32 seconds.

Ukraine’s Yelizaveta Bryzhina took silver as the top two passed Aleksandra Fedoriva just as the Russian seemed set for gold when she led coming out of the bend. Russian women had won five medals on Friday night.

Poland picked up their first gold, thanks to Marcin Lewandowski’s 800 meters win while Belarus’ Andrei Mikhnevich edged Olympic champion Tomasz Majewski of Poland and defending champion Ralf Bartels of Germany for shot put gold.

“After some difficult seasons I’m back where I want to be,” said former world champion Mikhnevich, whose second throw of 21.01 metres edged Majewski’s by one centimetre.

Jessica Ennis of Britain won heptathlon gold in a championship record 6,823 points to add the European title to the world one she won last year. Her points total surpassed Carolina Kluft’s 6,740 set in 2006. Ukraine’s Nataliya Dobrynska finished with 6,778 for silver and Germany’s Jennifer Oeser took bronze with 6,683.

Major triumph

Earlier, Zivile Balciunaite of Lithuania won the women’s marathon. Balciunaite went around the streets of Barcelona in 2 hours, 31 minutes, 14 seconds to earn her first major triumph. Nailya Yulamanova of Russia won silver in 2:32:15 and Anna Incerti of Italy took bronze in 2:32:48.

“I love to run in the heat, it suits me very well,” said Balciunaite, who slowly worked her way up the field before taking the lead for good after 30 kilometres. “The circuit helped a lot as well - no hills, no turns, just perfect.”

Lewandowski hung on the heels of Britain’s Michael Rimmer going around the final bend before moving ahead of the Briton to take it in a time of 1:47.07 at Barcelona’s Olympic stadium. Poland’s Adam Kszczot took the bronze.

Andreas Thorkildsen of Norway won his second straight European Championships javelin gold.

Thorkildsen coolly defended his title with a throw of 88.37m to shrug off the challenge of Matthias De Zordo of Germany, who could only get as close as 87.81m - still a personal best.

Thorkildsen added a second European gold to his Olympic and world titles.

Tero Pitkamaki of Finland won bronze after throwing 86.6m.