European Championships

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Football fans are in for a treat with a month of international action now underway at Euro 2024.

Italy’s Curtis betters own 50m backstroke world record

ROME: Italy’s Sara Curtis broke her own 50m women’s backstroke world record on Thursday when she won gold in 26.56 seconds at the European Championships in Paris, a day after she had set the previous record. Curtis, 19, had smashed five-time Olympic champion Kaylee McKeown’s ‌2023 record ‌on Wednesday when she ‌clocked ⁠26.63 seconds in ⁠the semifinals. Mary-Ambre Moluh from France finished half a second after Curtis to take silver, while Britain’s Lauren Cox won bronze. “I’m happy I managed it again. It’s absurd, ⁠another crazy feat,” Curtis ‌told Rai 2 ‌after breaking the world record twice ‌within 24 hours. It was the third ‌medal for Curtis at the championships, who won bronze in 100m freestyle and silver in the 4x100m freestyle. The ‌teenager, who studies at the University of Virginia, has been ⁠inching ⁠toward the world record all year, having broken the Italian record and the European record before overtaking Australian McKeown’s time. “From the moment I set off for Virginia, that’s all I thought about, the record.

Warholm on track in bid for fourth Euro hurdles gold

BIRMINGHAM, UK: Karsten Warholm kept his bid for a second gold of the European championships in Birmingham and a fourth 400m hurdles title on track as he sailed through qualifiers on Wednesday. Warholm, who set the 400m hurdles world record of 45.94 seconds when winning gold at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, was part of the Norwegian quartet that won the 4x400m mixed relay on Monday. He won his semifinal at the Alexander Stadium in 48.01sec, with the final scheduled for 1940 GMT on Friday. Since winning his first world title in London back in 2017, Warholm has been one of the most dominant athletes in the world of track and field. The 30-year-old has claimed two more world titles, but had to be content with Olympic silver at the 2024 Paris Games. He is also Europe’s leading hurdler, having bagged three back-to-back continental titles in Berlin in 2018, Munich in 2022 and Rome two years ago. Warholm equalled German Harald Schmid’s haul of three European 400m hurdles titles when he won in a championship record of 46.98sec in Rome and will move out as sole record holder should he win in Birmingham. Remarkably, since the 2016 Olympic Games when Warholm made the semifinals in his first full season in the event, he has only been beaten once by a European — France’s Wilfried Happio finishing fourth in the final of the 2022 world championships in Oregon, the Norwegian star was seventh on his return from injury. Warholm also holds the 33 fastest times in history by a European 400m hurdler, including a season’s best of 46.61sec for victory in the London Diamond League last month. Warholm leads the 2026 European list by almost one second from Germany’s Emil Agyekum, the only two Europeans to have broken the 48sec barrier this year