Danish Championships bronze and a Faroese record for Rebekka Fuglø

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

This weekend the Danish Indoor Championships are being held in the hall in Skive, and three Faroese athletes are competing. They are the three Treysti girls, Rebekka Fuglø, Oddvør Josephsen and Maria Biskopstø, who is currently attending a sports boarding school in Vejle, where she is taking athletics as her main subject.

But first let us look at Rebekka’s result in Nordenkampen last weekend, when Rebekka represented the Danish/Icelandic national team in a Nordic international match against Norway, Finland and Sweden. Each country had two representatives in each event, and Rebekka was selected to run the 1500 m. Iceland’s Aníta Hinriksdóttir, a world-class 800 m runner, was put in as pacemaker, so the pace was sky-high right from the start. Rebekka therefore ended up running largely on her own for most of the race. At one point she was close to catching the field again, but then dropped back. She kept Denmark’s Line Schultz behind her, and because only one Finn was taking part, Rebekka finished sixth in the race. Her time, 4:32, was a few tenths of a second faster than the week before, when she won Pallas Spelen. The second Norwegian woman was not far ahead, and had Rebekka run up to her very best, she could have gained another place.

And now back to the 1500 m at the Danish Championships today. The favourite was Maja Alm, a multiple world champion in orienteering, who over the past two years has also joined the European elite in both cross-country and track running. There was also the talented 18-year-old Anna Mark Helwig.

Rebekka catches her breath, sitting in the green Vejle kit. She represents Vejle IF when she competes at the Danish Championships

Maja Alm went to the front straight away, while Rebekka settled in behind Anna. Rebekka’s pace was on course for a Faroese record from the start; the record stood at 4:29. They passed 1000 metres in 2:56.5, and after one more lap at the same pace, Rebekka increased the tempo and tried to get away from Anna. At the same time, the gap to Maja at the front began to shrink. But Rebekka was unable to close in on Maja, and Anna regained her strength and outsprinted Rebekka, who by now had given everything she had. Rebekka was delighted with her bronze medal, but no less so with her time, which was a big Faroese record: 4:26.35. This is also the strongest result in athletics in the Faroe Islands ever. With 1022 IAAF points, it pushes Marna Egholm’s strong marathon result from Berlin in 2015 down into second place.

In January and February we have now had five new Faroese indoor records in five different events by five different athletes. More on that in a later article.