Ala takes on elite at Fanny Blankers-Koen Games
ALASTAIR CHALMERS lines up for the classiest race so far of his burgeoning senior career on Sunday.
And the 21-year-old hopes that the star-studded 400m hurdles field, headed by two recent World Championships medallists, will lift him to a truly quick time.
This exciting opportunity comes at the Netherlands’ annual Fanny Blankers-Koen Games, a long-standing staple of the World Athletics calendar.
The event holds Continental Tour Gold status – one tier below the famed Diamond League – and carries the name of the ‘flying housewife’ who won four golds at the London 1948 Olympics.
Ranked merely seventh of eight hurdlers with his 49.66sec. best, the Tokyo hopeful is excited to get that extra push.
‘It’s an absolutely unbelievable opportunity for me to run well, because it’s going to be against some of the best in the world,’ Chalmers said.
Topping the bill is Qatar’s Abderrahman Samba, whose incredible 46.98 PB makes him the third-fastest 400m hurdler ever and who overcame injury to clinch bronze at his home World Championships in 2019.
Turkey’s Yasmani Copello is another sub-48 man and a world silver medallist from London 2017.
But Chalmers knows how to take a scalp or two and he recently beat the fifth seed, France’s Ludvy Vaillant, to snatch second at the European Team Championships in Poland.
