Kluft and Co. set for big title bash at home Euro

By John Bagratuni Aug 4, 2006, 17:22 GMT

Gothenburg, Sweden - The European athletics championships timetable is designed in such a way that the home fans will be able to cheer their superstars on five of the seven days.

Heptathlon queen Carolina Kluft will kickstart the action Monday and Tuesday to get the fans in the mood to party. Stefan Holm is the top men's high jump favourite the next day, Wednesday.

Women's high jumper Kajsa Bergqvist and 100m hurdles runner Sausanna Kallur should get the weekend celebration going in an already sold-out Friday session and triple jumper Christian Olsson is to round it all off on the penultimate day Saturday.

Kluft, Olsson and Bergqvist are defending European champions and all three have won world titles. Kluft, Holm and Olsson also won Olympic gold in 2004 and all five lead the 2006 rankings in Europe.

'To win a major championship on home soil would definitely be something. I try to win every competition I participate in, but this one is particularly important because it is in Sweden and probably my only chance to win a major championships on home soil,' said Bergqvist.

Olsson agreed: 'These European championships are very important for me. I am delighted to jump in my country. There are some others who can jump 18 metres, but I want to be the first.'

Olsson was a 15-year-old schoolboy selling programmes when the worlds were held 1995 in the Ullevi stadium, watching Jonathan Edwards hop, skip and jump the still valid world record 18.29 metres before becoming the heir of the Briton for good at the 2003 worlds.

The 1995 worlds were also a turning point for Swedish athletics because after the glorious pole vault and high jump days of the 1970s and 1980s from the likes of Kjell Isaksson and Patrick Sjoberg, the country won zero medals.

The key to success was a change in coaching methods by the Swedish athletics federation.

The Swedes introduced the rigid East German training scheme, minus the doping part of that - giving the athletes greater freedom instead of drugs.

'Of course we only copied the clean part. The East Germans were miles ahead of us in the areas of physiology and performance-building,' says head coach Thomas Engdahl.

He added in a general way: 'First of all our best trainers are educated very well when it comes to the area of how to perform well at the top level. Secondly, we concentrate on the athlete as an individual.

'We may have less talents compared to bigger countries, but that doesn't matter because we are better in helping them into high-performance sport,' Engdahl says.

Given the current results, the system has worked in a splendid way over the past years and could culminate in a week-long celebration of Swedish athletics in the Ullevi stadium Monday through Sunday.

'I believe what is happening in Sweden is fantastic. Everything they started in 1995 is paying off,' said Jonathan Edwards.