Croatian Olympians Vanja Perisic and Nikolina Horvat, who gathered experience in Beijing and showed that they did not end up at the Olympics by accident,[:] will participate in this year’s Zagreb Grand Prix. As the young Croatian runners don’t have much opportunity to compete against such strong opponents, the Meeting is another opportunity to gather experience. They will certainly have enough great athletes to learn from. Perisic will compete in the 1,000m, in which Olympic finalists Russia’s Svetlana Klyuka (placed 4th in the 800m) and Natalia Yevdokimova (fourth in the 1,500m) will try to go under 2:40, or at least around the season’s best result of 2:37.72 or the meeting record of 2:36.33. To achieve the expected result level, their pacemaker will be a third Russian athlete, Tatjana Andrianova, who finished 8th in the 800m in Beijing.
Sedam pekinških finalistica na 1.000 m i 400 m prepone
In the 400m hurdles, Nikolina Horvat will race against four finalists from Beijing. The Olympic bronze medallist Tasha Danvers (Great Britain) confirmed her arrival, as did Ekaterina Bikert (Russia), Anastasia Rabchenyuk (Ukraine) and Tiffany Williams (USA). As Danvers, Rabchenyuk and Williams ran under 54 seconds this year, one can assume that they will challenge the meeting record of 54.14.