Marna wins silver and sets Faroese record

Machine-translated from Faroese and not yet reviewed. Read the original.

Once again this evening the Faroese athletes have been in exciting finals, where there were certainly hopes of medals. First to compete tonight was Tórur Mortensen, who was one of 12 participants in the long jump final.

Unfortunately, Tórur has been struggling with an injury over the last few days, so it was doubtful whether he could jump to his best. And it turned out worse than feared. After a foul jump and a jump of 6.15 m, Tórur had to stop before the injury got even worse. Tórur is, after all, competing in the triple jump on Friday, and there he has a better chance of achieving a top result.

The big medal hopes tonight rested on Hanus Bergsson in the javelin and Marna Egholm in the 10,000 metres. Unfortunately, both events started at the same time, so it was not easy to follow both.

Katie Bristow from Shetland took the lead in the 10,000 m race. This was expected, as earlier this year she finished third in the Scottish Championships over exactly 10,000 m. Marna also broke away quite early and settled into second place. It looked as though this would be a two-way battle between them, but further back we now saw Kim Baglietto from Gibraltar pick up the pace and start closing in on Marna.

At the same time, Marna herself had begun to close in on Katie in 1st place, so now the gap was really narrowing and the tension was rising. With about 3,000 metres to go, all three were together at the front. Kim Baglietto, who won the half marathon on Sunday, now looked very strong. She took the lead, and the lap times were fast. Katie had to let go, and a little later she stopped altogether and withdrew from the race. Marna, on the other hand, gave everything she had and tried to hang on to Baglietto. She managed this for the next three laps, but then she had to let go. Kim Baglietto was simply too strong on the day and won gold in a time of 36:23. Marna also kept up a good pace over the final stretch, and with a fast last lap she not only won silver but also set a new Faroese record of 36:48.25 – 10 seconds faster than Bjørk Herup Olsen’s old record.

In the strong javelin competition, Hanus Bergsson was in second place after the first three rounds. In the first round he chose to throw safely, and reached a good 59 metres, which gave him 2nd place. After the fourth round Hanus dropped back to third place despite a small improvement. And after 61.78 in the fifth round he dropped back to fourth place, with only one and a half metres between gold and Hanus. Another small improvement for Hanus in the sixth round – 61.96 – did not help Hanus onto the podium either, and this is the first time that a throw over 60 metres has not won a medal. Fortunately, Hanus is young, strong and developing well, so his medals will come later.

This morning Rebekka Fuglø and Rúni Seloy ran semi-finals in the 800 and 1,500 metres respectively. Rúni was unfortunately three seconds short of reaching the final, while Rebekka Fuglø, despite very strong opposition, ran fairly comfortably into the final, which takes place on Friday.

800m Women

Javelin Men

10,000m Women

 

Photos