Turava gets 20km walk title by leading all the way

Aug 9, 2006, 18:20 GMT

Gothenburg, Sweden - Ryta Turava of Belarus led from start to finish to get her first major 20-kilometres walk title at the European championships on Wednesday.

Turava, 25, walked away from her rivals in the Ullevi stadium and steadily built it up on the surrounding roads, returning to the stadium with a time of 1 hour 27 minutes 8 seconds for a massive winning margin of 1:27 minutes.

Olga Kaniskina of Russia won a tight battle for second place, clocking 1:28:35 hours ahead of Italian Elisa Rigaudo who had 1:28:37.

Turava won the walking World Cup and got a world championship silver as well in 2005. She just missed the 2004 Olympic podium in fourth place.

In other action, Belgian favourite Kim Gevaert led the women's 100m semi-finals with 11.19 seconds and Olympic champion Yuliya Nesterenko of Belarus also made the final later in the day with 11.28 seconds.

But Merlene Ottey, the former Jamaican star who now competes for Slovenia at her first Euro event aged 46, missed the final by three hundredth of a second with 11.44 seconds. But the veteran with a record 35 medals at major championships vowed that 'my career continues.'

Other finals later in the day are the women's 400m hurdles, triple jump and the men's 400m, 1,500m, high-jump and javelin.