Cuban Triple Jumpers Dominate at Gothenburg Indoor Meet

Cuba swept the podium in the men’s triple jump at the Samsung indoor athletics meet in Gothenburg, Sweden on Tuesday.

Giralt jumped 17.27 meters, a world best this year, Alexis Copello 17.01 and Yoandri Betanzos 16.98 to take gold, silver and bronze medals for Cuba and to move into positions No. 1, 2 and 4 on the 2010 World list.

While Copello and Betanzos were showing the best consistency it was Giralt that hit the big one as he bounded all the way to 17.27m in the third round to win by over a quarter of meter ahead of Coppelo and Betanzos who hit close to the 17m-mark (one centimeter over and two centimeters below respectively).

In doing so, the Cubans beat out local favorite and world champion at 2004 Budapest

Christian Olsson whose best was 16.87 meters for a fourth place finish.

The 2009 Berlin World Champion Phillips Idowu (Britain) came fifth with a jump of 16.74 m.

In other competition, Cuban decathlon athletes Yordanis García and Leonel Suárez had good results in the 60-meter hurdles, long jump and shotput.

Swede Nicklas Wiberg leads with 2,636 points, followed by Yordanis with 2,625, Trey Hardee from the United States with 2,623 and then Leonel with 2,511.