2007 in review: Women’s Combined Events

We have reached the final three in our ‘2007 in review' series, and no review of 2007 would be complete without a happy reflection on one of Europe's most successful disciplines. Any discussion of women's Combined Events are obviously dominated by the imposing figure of its Swedish superstar, however, the incredible performances produced at all levels of the Osaka Heptathlon left European athletic fans with a great deal to smile about…

In the early days of last summer there was talk about a possible contender for Carolina Kluft's crown, in her usual impressive style, 24-year-old Swede proved that it was just talk. Klüft emerged as the clear winner at the IAAF World Championships in Osaka, grabbing her third successive World title with an outstanding European record of 7,032 points, the second 7000 plus result of Klüft's successful career.

Until Osaka, 19-year-old Russian, Tatyana Chernova, was boasting the best result of the season, a wind assisted 6,768p win in Arles, but Klüft's 6,681p win in Götzis had come with a strong headwind in each event, where Chernova had an average +4.2 wind in her series.

In Osaka the competition was over between these two after the first event. The Swede cleared the 100m Hurdles with perfection, while Chernova was far away from her Arles form. However there was another athlete who found the form of her life. Ukraine's Lyudmyla Blonska produced some huge personal bests, a 1.92m High Jump and an excellent 6.88m Long Jump, however none of these performances were good enough to make Blonska a serious challenge to Klüft's gold medal.

The seemingly unstoppable Swedish superstar has now won 19 consecutive Heptathlons since July 2001 and has scored more than 6500 points in the last 15. Klüft is now the European record and World Junior record holder and has not lost in any of her nine Senior or Junior Major Championship Heptathlons Outdoors. She is the reigning Olympic Champion, 3 times World Champion, 2 times European Champion, 2 times World Junior Champion and European Junior Champion as well.

Klüft's total determination at the World Championships was demonstrated when she set a season's best result in each of the seven Heptathlon events. Her 7032 points total also removed Larisa Turchinskaya's (RUS) 7007p result (1989) from the European record lists, and allowed Klüft to join American world record holder Jackie Joyner-Kersee, as the only other female Multi-eventer to score over 7000 points more than once in her career.

Lyudmyla Blonska's great series paid off with a silver medal and a 6832p Ukranian record, while Britain's Kelly Sotherton won the bronze medal following a close competition with European Athletics Rising Star of 2007, 21-year-old fellow Brit, Jessica Ennis.

Source/Courtesy
European Athletics (EAA)
https://www.european-athletics.org/
EAA

Notable statistics:

2007 head to head statistics between best Europeans:

Career head to head statistics between best Europeans: