The Spanish capital of Madrid was the latest stop for the World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold meetings, with the Sportflex Super X 720 athletics track in the Polideportivo Municipal Gallur producing one European short track record, three world-leading marks and seven national records.
Highlight of the night came in the very last event on the track when local star Mohamed Attaoui thrilled the crowd with a European 1000m short track record of 2:14.52.
The Spaniard had ambitions of improving the decade-old world record of 2:14.20 by Djibouti’s Ayanleh Souleiman – also set on a Mondo athletics track in Stockholm in 2016 – and although Attaoui fell short of the global mark by a mere fraction of a second, he was still rewarded with a continental record.
Madrid was the fourth of eight World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold meetings – the world’s premier indoor one-day events – and Mondo athletics tracks are present at half of those meetings.
Two days after Madrid, the focus of attention for athletics fans moved north to the French city of Metz where Dutch superstar Femke Bol made her much anticipated debut over 800m.
The world had been wondering what she was capable of over four laps of the L'anneau Halle d'Athlétisme de Metz’s Sportflex Super X 720 athletics track and Bol didn’t disappoint.
She produced a wonderfully assured run in her very first competitive outing over the distance, leading from gun to tape and to win in a Dutch 800m short track record of 1:59.07.
Nicknamed The Flying Dutchwoman, many of Bol’s best performances have come on Mondo athletics tracks.
Her three world 400m short track records all came on Mondo athletics tracks and her 2023 and 2025 World Athletics Championships 400m hurdles gold medals, in Budapest and Tokyo respectively, were won on Mondo athletics tracks.
All five of her European indoor titles and both her world indoor titles also came on Mondo athletics tracks.
The Metz meeting – a World Athletics Indoor Tour Silver meeting – also saw a superbly entertaining men’s long jump duel between Italy’s reigning outdoor world champion Mattia Furlani and Bulgaria’s 2025 European indoor champion Bozhidar Saraboyukov.
Both men, still only 21 but rivals since they were teenagers, jumped world-leading distances and national indoor bests of 8.39m with Furlani getting the verdict by virtue of having a second-best jump that was just one centimetre better than Saraboyukov.