European Athletics – (EAA) – News – Lewandowski aiming to mint an imperial mark in Bydgoszcz

The 2010 European Athletics Championships 800m gold medallist Marcin Lewandowski will take a tilt at the European best performance over the now rarely-run distance of 880 yards at the XI European Athletics Festival meeting in Bydgoszcz on 3 June.

The meeting is the first of this summer’s nine European Athletics Outdoor Premium Meetings.

The current continental best performance – imperial distances have been dropped from the record books since 1976 apart from the mile – is 1:46.7. It is jointly held by both Jozef Plachy, from what was then Czechoslovakia, who ran the time in 1970 and which was then equalled by Luciano Susanj, running for the former Yugoslavia, in 1975.

Lewandowski’s 800m best is 1:43.84 and he has an outstanding chance of beating Plachy and Susanj’s mark as statisticians usually convert 880 yards times to the more conventional 800m by knocking off six or seven-tenths of a second.

Potentially, Lewandowski could even get inside the world best of 1:44.1, set by the American runner Rick Wohlhuter in 1974.

Certainly, he should smash the Polish best which has been on the record books since September 1959 when his namesake Stefan Lewandowski, known in Poland as The Flying Doctor, ran 1:48.6 during a tour of Sweden.
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European Athletics – (EAA) – News