Team Europe: Borlée and Bingham at the helm of men’s 4000m campaign – European Athletics (EAA) – News

Over the next two weeks, European Athletics will present brief profiles of the athletes who will represent Team Europe at the IAAF Continental Cup to be held in Split, Croatia on 4-5 September.

Besides Europe, three other continental teams: Americas (NACAC and CONSUDATLE), Africa and Asia/Pacific (Asia and Oceania), will lay claim to the title of “Continental Champion.”

Today, in three parts, we run the rule over Team Europe’s male sprinters.

400m:

Kevin Borlée (BEL)

Born: 22.02.88
Height: 181 cm
Weight: 62 kg
Club: Florida State University, WS

Major championships record:
Olympic Games: 400m: sf/2008, 4x400m: 5/2008
World championships: 400m: sf/2009, 4x400m: 4^th/2009
European Athletics Championships: 400m: 1/2010, 4x400m: 3/2010
World junior championships: 400m: sf/2006, 4x400m: 4^th/2006
World youth championships: 200m: sf/2005
European Athletics Junior Championships: 400m: sf/2007

Personal best: 44.88 400m (2008)
Season’s best: 45.08 Barcelona 30.7.10   

 

 

Kevin Borlée may forever be known as the wrong brother. Everyone expected it to be Jonathan Borlée who claimed Belgium’s first ever European 400m title, but brother Kevin stole the show with a dramatic victory in one of the closest finals ever.

It was Jonathan – the older twin by five minutes – who’d set three national records this year, including one in the semi-finals, but Kevin held his form to come from fifth with 50m left to win in 45.08. “Tonight it was not easy but I handled the race at the end,” said Kevin who was the first Belgian man to become European champion since 1971.

The twins are not international athletes by chance. Their father and coach Jacques was an international 400m runner and their elder sister Olivia is a sprinter with Olympic and world relay medals to her name.

Although Kevin set a Belgian record of 44.88 in the Olympic semi-final it was Jonathan who had shown most before Barcelona. Both attended Florida State University in Tallahassee, USA, where Kevin is still a student of physiotherapy. They both suffered the same stress fracture – the tarsus – in 2009, Kevin’s diagnosed six weeks after Jonathan.

A world youth 200m semi-finalist in 2005, Borlée has been close to world and Olympic relay honours in recent years, but never won a major championship medal until Barcelona, when he came away with two.

Michael Bingham (GBR)
Born: 13.04.86
Height: 186 cm
Weight: 79 kg
Club: Wake Forest

Major championships record
Olympic Games: 4x400m: 4/2008
World championships: 400m: 7/2009, 4x400m: 2/2009
European Athletics Championships: 400m: 2/2010, 4x400m:2/2010

Personal best: 44.74 (2009)
Season’s best: 44.88 Barcelona 28.7.10

Michael Bingham won a European silver by less than the thickness of his vest in Barcelona. Bingham crossed the line in the same time as his team-mate Martyn Rooney but was given the brighter coloured medal on a photo finish. Running blind from lane eight, Bingham looked on for a narrow victory until Borlee made his late charge.

“I panicked. It definitely should have been a different colour,” he lamented afterwards.

Born in the USA, Bingham has had a British passport since August 2007 and was cleared by the IAAF to run for Britain in April 2008. His father Norris is British and lives in Nottingham (Bingham is a Nottingham Forest fan), but Bingham grew up with his mother and four siblings in Winston-Salem, a small town in North Carolina known as the home of the Krispy Kreme doughnut. In 2005 he won a bronze medal for USA in the decathlon at the Pan-American junior championships.

He helped Britain to fourth in the 4x400m relay at the Beijing Olympics before finishing seventh in the World Championships final last summer. He studied politics and economics at Wake Forest University, for whom he won a US collegiate indoor title last year and says if he wasn’t an athlete he’d work in public law or policy.

Bingham often trains with the Borlee twins in Florida but is based at Loughborough University in the British midlands throughout the outdoor season where he trains with Rooney and Ireland’s David Gillick.

 European Athletics (EAA) – News