Gorzów Meeting Poland May 24, 2024
After returning from the past weekend’s competition in Germany, Russel had a 6 day turn around before the next competition scheduled in, the Gorzow Meeting in Gorzów, Wielkopolski, Poland.
This competition was the first international athletics competition in the city’s history and included elite athletes not just from Europe but Australia to Brazil to South Africa. This, alongside being Russel’s first bronze continental tour meet in Europe, ensured that there would be a high quality field for the men’s 200m.
The competition lead up proved to be trickier than usual, with competition administration errors, flight delays and/or cancellations, and a suitcase not arriving in Poland prior to the competition.
Fortunately, Russel’s race kit and spikes were in his backpack, a trick he learned at a young age when travelling for competitions abroad in the event of lost luggage. However, Russel’s running shoes were in the suitcase thus meaning he would need to get a pair of trainers for the warm up as well as some essentials that were packed in the suitcase.
It was then the van picking up the athletes from the airport to the competition hotel that broke down during the drive, leading to athletes getting taxis to finish the journey. Nevertheless, despite things looking like luck wasn’t in Russel’s favour, the next day arrived and it was time for the competition, in which Russel was placed in lane 1 for men’s 200m. Although a tough lane draw based on seasons best times, Russel had committed to overcoming the obstacles from the past couple days determined to walk out of this competition with something to hold his head high.
As luck would have it, this was fortunately the case, with Russel running a season’s best time of 21.17 from lane 1.
A strong run off the bend put Russel up onto contention coming off the bend right on the heels of the favourites from the middle lanes, however it was to 6th place for this race.
Coming off this race, there was plenty of positives to take away from the race itself with the attitude and professionalism off-track to prepare and determination to adapt given the difficult circumstances and challenges.
This concluded May’s competition schedule, with eyes now on June.