European indoor 800m champion and world indoor finalist Álvaro de Arriba finally got the World Indoor Championship standard at the Müller Indoor Grand Prix —a World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold meeting— in Birmingham on Saturday 19 Februray.
The two-time Spanish national indoor 800m champion crossed the line in third position with a time 1:45.82, the third-best of his career and the fastest since his victory at the 2018 World Indoor Championship semifinal.
De Arriba was defeated by Kenya’s Collins Kipruto and Great Britain’s Elliot Giles, who clocked 1:45.39 and 1:45.42 respectively. The three will face each other again in Madrid on Wednesday 2 March. In the same race, reigning world indoor bronze medalist Saúl Ordóñez of Spain finished seventh with a season best of 1:46.85, just 0.15 off the world standard.
In 1500m, Spain’s Adel Mechaal secured his second World Indoor Championship standard with a 3:35.30 personal best in his national record attempt (he had to break 3:33.32), placing second behind Kenya’s Abel Kipsang.
After breaking the Spanish 60m record three times so far this season, María Isabel Pérez came just one hundredth of a second close to it with 7.21. The 28-year-old sprinter crossed the line in fifth position, in a race won by the triple Olympic champions Elaine Thompson-Herah of Jamaica in 7.08.
Two days after breaking the Spanish indoor mile record with 4:28.54 in Liévin, Esther Guerrero was 0.01 shy off the national indoor 1000m record. The two-time Olympian finished in fifth place with 2:38.81, while the Birmingham-based European U23 800m champion, Isabelle Boffey, took the win in 2:38.25.
Olympic finalist Marta Pérez clocked 4:09.27 to place seventh in the 1500m, the same position earned the 2016 Olympic silver medalist Orlando Ortega in the 60m hurdles with 7.79.
Hodgkinson and Duplantis blazed with meeting records
Olympic silver medalist Keely Hodgkinson triumph in the 800m was the icing on the cake. The 19-year-old smashed the stadium and British indoor record with 1:57.20, the sixth-fastest time in history and the quickest since the world record of 1:55.82 was set by Jolanda Ceplak in 2002.
Earlier, Sweden’s Olympic champion Armand Duplantis had set a pole vault meeting record and world-leading mark of 6.05m. The 22-year-old upped the bar to 6.19m and tried to break his own world record but failed all his three attempts.
