Next adventure of the European Championships for Šutej, Sember

Munich, Germany – The next international athletics event this summer involving athletes with ties to Arkansas will be the 25th European Championships, which will host the Olympic Stadium to mark the 50th anniversary of its hosting the 1972 Olympic Games.

Razorback graduate Tina Šutej of Slovenia competes in the pole vault, which has a qualifying round on Monday, August 15 and the final on Wednesday, August 17.

Great Britain’s Cindy Sember, who trains with Arkansas women’s assistant head coach Chris Johnson, competes in the 100m hurdles with the first round scheduled for Saturday August 20 while the semi-finals and the finals to be held on Sunday 21st August, the last day of the event.

The 25th edition of this meeting was originally scheduled for 2020 in Paris but was canceled due to the pandemic. The most recent version of the meeting took place in Berlin in 2018. Now Germany is the first country in the history of the European Championships to host back-to-back events.

In addition to hosting the Olympic Games 50 years ago, Munich previously served as the venue for the European Championships in 2002. The Olympic Stadium also hosted the 1974 FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro 1988 in soccer.

Šutej leads the field of 25 women pole vaulters with a season-best outdoor 15-6 (4.72) and an indoor best 15-9 (4.80). This will be Sutej’s fifth European Outdoor Championships and she has also competed in five European Indoor Championships.

A silver medalist at the European Indoor 2021, Šutej achieved 10th place in the European Outdoor^th Place twice (2010 and 2014). At World Championships competitions that season, she picked up an indoor bronze medal and placed fourth in the outdoor with heights of 15-7 (4.75) and 15-5 (4.70), respectively.

A group of four vaulters follows with top scores of 15:5.5 (4.71) for the Italian Roberta Bruni and 15:5 (4.70) for Lene Retzius (Norway), Margot Chevrier (France) and Katerini Stefanidi ( Greece).

Stefanidi is the two-time defending champion of the European Championships with titles in 2016 and 2018, while she started 2014 with a silver medal. She holds the competition record with a height of 15-11 (4.85) from 2018 when the European Championships were held in Berlin.

Šutej, who competes at the age of 33, has broken her Slovenian national indoor and outdoor record ten times over the past four years. If Šutej holds the prospect of a medal in Munich, she would become the oldest medalist in the women’s pole vault at that competition, surpassing Nikoleta Kyriakopoulou of Greece, who was 32 when she won a medal in 2018.

With a field of 25 participants from 15 countries, Šutej will be among the 12 vaulters in Group B. The automatic qualification level for reaching the finals is 14-11.25 (4.55), while the top 12 overall progress. The progression in the qualifying round starts at 13-5.5 (4.10) and will move up to 13-11.25 (4.25) and then with highs of 14-5.5 (4.40), 14 -9.25 (4.50) and 14-11.25 (4.55).

Sember, who won a silver medal in the 60m hurdles at the 2021 European Indoor Championships, makes her debut on the outdoor version.

With a UK national record of 12.50 set during the World Championships semifinals earlier this summer, Sember is the season leader among the 36 competitors representing 24 countries in the 100m hurdles.

In the World Championships final, Sember clocked a wind-assisted 12.38 to finish fifth and then went on to claim a bronze medal at the Commonwealth Games with a time of 12.59.

Poland’s Pia Skryzszowska, last year’s European U21 champion, follows with 12.51, while Dutch Nadine Visser, fourth in the 2018 European final, has a best time of 12.66 this season.

The championship record in the 100m hurdles is 12.38, set by Bulgarian Yordanka Donkova in 1986.

EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS | Munich, Germany

Day 1 Monday 15 August

Day 3 Wednesday 17th August

Day 6 Saturday 20 August

Day 7 Sunday 21st August