Pedro Pichardo is European triple jump champion. Not bad for someone who admitted to not being 100% fit and even considered not going to Istanbul. Only 17.60 meters was enough to win gold in the triple jump final at the European Athletics Indoor Championships.
The Olympic, World and European outdoor champion still has no rivals, leaving the runner-up more than a meter away. A day after bettering the national record to 17.48 metres, he added 12 centimeters to the best indoor national score ever, with the best world jump of the year, after starting the defense of his European title with 17.26 .
Pichardo left Greece’s Nikolaos Andrikopoulos and Germany’s Mark Hess in second and third, with 16.58m and 16.54m respectively, while Tiago Luís Pereira finished in fifth place with 16.51m, his best mark of the year.
At the age of 29, Pichardo becomes the second Portuguese indoor champion in the triple jump, after Nelson Évora won the titles in Prague 2015 and Belgrade 2017. And he continues to strive to reach 18.29 meters, set as a world record by Britain’s Jonathan Edwards exactly at that age in 1995.
(updated)
Source: DN
