European Athletics – (EA) – News – Zurich review: Time arrives to make the smallest of differences

The season is not quite over but for some, it was their final appearance on the IAAF Diamond League circuit, a series of events that started back in May.

High hopes then. And now, as the competitions becomes one of just memories, there will be delight and despair, a mixture of fortunes to take into winter training ahead of 2014 where the biggest event is back in this same arena in Switzerland which will stage the European Athletics Championships in August.

The women's 800m was one such event as Mariya Savinova, of Russia, battled so hard down the home straight in her bid to overtake Kenyan Eunice Jepkoech Sum.

It was not to be, just as it proved not to be at her home World Championships in Moscow a few weeks before.

The difference this time was 0.11 as Sum won in 1:58.82. In Russia, the difference was 0.42 as Sum won in 1:57.38.

As the defending Olympic champion and European champion from 2010, Savinova's record speaks for itself and she will now go into those long hard months of training looking to narrow that smallest of gaps between Sum and her this year.

The pair may meet again before the summer closes but finishing second in Zurich by 0.11 instead of 0.42 in Moscow will surely give Savinova an important psychological lift as she plots 2014 and the Diamond League starts again.

One man who will remain on a high, literally, is Ukraine’s Bohdan Bondarenko, who triumphed once again in the high jump.

He is so determined to break that world record of 2.45m which Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor set in 1993 that on each occasion he now competes, the bar is raised above that if he has secured victory.

World champion Bondarenko is only 23 and he will be one of the main contenders for the end-of-year awards, both on the European and the world scene.

Like Savinova, he will enter the winter knowing he will want to work so hard, to make the smallest of differences to break such a huge barrier.

Athletics is never better summed up than in what Bondarenko is aiming to achieve. He is top of the world rankings with 2.41m and he needs to go just five centimetres higher to take his world to a level where no man has gone before.

In everyday life, to most of us that measurement would play no importance, but it is the figure that could pass through Bondarenko’s mind every day he goes to the track over the next few months, whether there is snow or rain to accompany him.