Saturday evening, Innsbruck saw a veritable firework display of athletic performance at the kick-off of the Golden Fly Series. With its best start list since the creation of this well-loved in-city event, the show was as exciting as could be anticipated! In perfect conditions, the performances on the FlySwat were outstanding.

The highlight of the evening was the long jump competition. A radar coupled laser-line, developed by Armin Margreiter and Fa. Medialas made its world premiere. A laser-line projected on the sand indicates the mark to beat. Audience and athletes were thrilled by this innovation and there were some excellent results.

The men’s competition was dominated by vice-European Champion Radek Juska (CZE) who broke the FlySwat record with a mark of 8.15m ahead of Swedish bronze medallist Andreas Otterling with 8.04m.

In the women’s Long Jump, Romanian Alina Rotaru was in top form and jumped 6.72m (just two centimetres short of her personal best) ahead of Ukrainian U23 European Vice-Champion Krystyna Hryshutyna with 6.49m. Austria’s local heroine, the recently crowned World Youth Champion in Heptathlon Sarah Lagger (aged just 15) increased her personal record to an impressive 6.18 bringing her to number 6 in the World Ranking for the U18 group.