One flight of barriers into her continental championships, Hila Varsano already owns a faster Israeli under-18 record. The 17-year-old from Maccabi Tel Aviv clocked 1:00.02 for the 400m hurdles in Friday's opening round of the European U18 Championships in Rieti, finishing third in her heat at the Stadio Raul Guidobaldi to move into Saturday's semi-finals.
The run trimmed 0.13 seconds from the national age-group best of 1:00.15 she had set in Tel Aviv on 4 July, a mark World Athletics already lists as the Israeli U18 record. The senior national record, Irina Lenskiy's 56.09 from June 2000, remains in another realm. But Varsano, born in April 2009, now has a sub-minute clocking squarely in view.
It was not her first record of the summer. In May she ran a leg in the quartet that set an Israeli U18 4x100m relay best of 47.49, according to her World Athletics profile.
Rieti is staging the fifth edition of the biennial under-18 championships, running from 16 to 19 July, and Israel's day extended well beyond the hurdles. Ido Noam and Aviv Ochman both came through the 2,000m steeplechase heats to reach Sunday's final, clocking 5:53.23 and 5:53.63 respectively.
Neither had a clean race. Ochman, of Leader Jerusalem, stumbled at the final water jump but held on to qualify, while Noam, who trains with Hapoel Emek Hefer and the excellence academy at the Wingate Institute, clipped one of the standard barriers in the second heat and likewise recovered.
Itay Magidi, the Israel Athletics Association's professional director and still the national record holder over the distance, made clear he would be happy to see that mark go. Both runners, he said in comments carried by Israeli media, had come through their mishaps to qualify, and he believes each is capable of a top-eight finish on Sunday if they recover well in time.
Varsano's semi-final follows on Saturday. Her trajectory this month, from 1:00.15 down to 1:00.02 inside a fortnight, suggests the new Israeli record may not survive the weekend either.
