Saturday, July 31, 2010

Plain sailing: Germany's Veronica Sailer crosses the line ahead of France's Veronique Mang on Thursday. AP PHOTO

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) Veronica Sailer won the women's 100-meter dash Thursday, while France showed its strength again on the track with a silver and bronze behind the German star at the European Championships.

Veronique Mang appeared ready to surge ahead when Sailer found a burst at the end and stuck out her upper body to get over the finish line in 11.10 seconds, a hundredth of a second ahead of Mang. Myriam Veronique gave France two podium positions for the second straight night, after Christophe Lemaitre won the men's 100 and Martial Mbandjock took the bronze.

Lemaitre was poised to make it a sprint double when he reached the 200 final without trouble on Thursday with a leading time of 20.39 seconds. Defending champ Francis Obikwelu of Portugal pulled out with a right leg injury.

"Tomorrow is possible," said Lemaitre, who admitted he was tired in the morning after winning the 100 on Wednesday night. "Now I need to focus on the task ahead."

Sailer won the first of two golds for Germany on the night; Linda Stahl led a German 1-2 in the javelin ahead of Christina Obergfoll, while Olympic champion Barbora Spotakova of the Czech Republic won bronze.

Phillips Idowu of Britain won the men's triple jump with a personal-best of 17.81 meters.

"I picked the absolutely right time to do it," Idowu said. "With the world and European championships titles now under my belt I am just missing one title — the Olympics."

Former Olympic silver medalist Marian Oprea of Romania took the silver with a leap of 17.51 meters, while Teddy Tamgho — the world indoor champion who set the third-best leap of 17.98 earlier this summer — could only manage bronze for France.

"Physically I was here but not mentally," Tamgho said after rain and wind came into play at Barcelona's Olympic stadium.

Aleksander Shustov leaped 2.33 meters to edge fellow Russian Ivan Ukhov, the reigning world indoor and European indoor champion, by 0.02 meters in the high jump.

Russia leads the medal count with nine — including three golds — while France has six and Britain five, after Martyn Bernard's season-best high jump of 2.29 meters netted him bronze.

Germany, Belarus, Italy and Portugal all have three each after three days of competition.

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