World 400m champion, Femke Bol opened her outdoor campaign in winning style with a commanding 53.07 victory.
The 24-year-old Dutchwoman looks set to defend her European outdoor crown in Rome later this month, as she made light work of the one-lap barriers from Jamaica’s Rushell Clayton - the winner in Marrakech and Oslo - who clocked 53.78 for the runner-up spot.
Bol said afterwards: ”It was really fun - Stockholm is really a wonderful place and especially if I can run during Mondo´s pole vault world record attempts, then the crowd is really amazing.
“I could execute my stride pattern exactly like planned, there are still some points to improve but that is always the case for a season opener. My first two hurdles can be a bit better, it was a bit slow and the clearing of the hurdles was not that good. But its my fastest season opener, so I can’t complain too much.
“I started my season a bit later than usual because I had a busy indoor season followed by the World Relays. I wanted to put in a good training block to be as fresh as possible for the Olympic Games, and given that the Europeans are in between too, this seemed to be the best plan for us. Compared to last season, hurdle seven is much better now, we have worked a lot on this with technique training and also on the clearance of the hurdles with my bad leg.”
Elsewhere, Cuba’s world indoor silver medalist, Leyanis Hernandez Perez took the women’s triple jump with a best of 14.67m in the third round.
The 22-year-old winner in Eugene beat Jamaica’s Shanieka Ricketts into second place, with the Olympic and world fourth-placer registering 14.40m,
Hernandez-Perez said afterwards: “I am feeling really well, it is my first time in this wonderful country and the experience was amazing. I am not absolutely satisfied with my performance because I came here to jump further and I could have done it well but I made some technical mistakes, mostly on the third part of the jump.
"I will still have to work on this third part of the jump especially to get 15m which is my goal. I will keep working and I hope to fix these mistakes before Monaco Diamond League. My goal is to get to Paris in the best possible shape."
Nicola Sutton for the BAUHAUS-galan media team.