Kallur wins 100 hurdles, 2 silvers awarded

Susanna Kallur won the women's 100 metres hurdles at the European championships on Friday to become the first Swedish-born athlete in 44 years to capture an outdoor international championship sprint gold.

Ireland's Derval O'Rourke and Germany's [Images] Kirsten Bolm were both awarded silver medals after clocking 12.72 seconds.

Immediately after crossing the line, Bolm's name appeared in second place on the stadium's results board before it was changed to show O'Rourke in the silver medal position.

That prompted the German federation to protest, leaving Kallur unable to celebrate her win on the podium as the medals ceremony was postponed until the dispute had been resolved.

Kallur's run was a fraction slower than her 12.52 in Rome last month, this year's fastest European time.

"It's unbelievable," said the Swede, who also won gold at the 2005 European indoor championships in Madrid.

"I would like to thank the crowd. I felt like I had extra muscle fibres because of them.

"This is one of the most amazing feelings in my life. I really did what was necessary, I stayed focused on my own race and was able to run my best time in the last race.

"For the future I hope to continue to improve and work on my consistency, mainly towards world championships and Olympic games," said Kallur, who failed to reach the final at the worlds in Helsinki last year.

"This season is very successful for me, I am bettering my times and I am consistent."

The last Swedish-born athlete to win a sprint gold at an international outdoors championship was Owe Jonsson, who won the men's 200 metres in the 1962 European championships in Belgrade.

In 1996 former Russian Ludmila Engquist won the 100 metres hurdles gold at the Atlanta Olympics [Images] competing for Sweden and a year later won gold at the world championships in Athens.

Germany's Bolm had been disappointed at having her hopes of silver dashed after seeing the change on the scoreboard.

"At first I was really happy when I saw that I had won the silver medal, then I got really frustrated when they took away my name," she said.

Susanna's twin Jenny Kallur, who won silver behind her sister in Madrid last year, had to settle for seventh place after finishing in 12.94.

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