Reigning European 200m champion Ramil Guliyev has been announced for the Meeting of Madrid — a World Athletics Continental Tour Silver meet at Vallehermoso Stadium on Saturday 18 June.
Turkey’s Guliyev, who claimed 200m gold at the European Championship in Berlin in 2018, will try to defend his title in Munich next August. The 32-year-old has already opened his season with 10.56 in the 100m and 20.92 in the 200m and is sharpening his speed ahead of the international championships.
In Madrid, Guliyev will race the 100m, an event in which only 20 European athletes in history have dipped under the 10-second barrier. And the Turkish sprinter is one of them, with a personal best of 9.97.
Back in 2018, Guliyev broke the 16-year-old European Championship record of 19.85 winning with a time of 19.76, just 0.04 of the European record set by Pietro Mennea in 1976. In Berlin, he was also part of the Turkish team that took the 4x100m silver medal in a national record of 37.98.
At 32, Guliyev still stays as one of the best 200m specialists across Europe. In 2019 broke the 20-second barrier again and finished fifth at the World Championship final in Doha. Last year he reached the Olympic Games semifinal, clocking 20.31 in his heat to become the best European athlete at the event.
Guliyev’s career highlight was the 2017 World Championship 200m final in London. The Turk was the underdog in a final that included 400m world record-holder Wayde van Niekerk of South Africa and Botswana’s Isaac Makwala, among others, but claimed the title with a stunning comeback in the final meters. Guliyev became just the second European to win the 200m gold medal at Worlds after Greece’s Kostas Kenteris did it in Edmonton in 2001.
Guliyev hit the global stage almost 15 years ago, when at 17 competed at the World Indoor Championship in Valencia in 2008. That same year the Turk reached the quarterfinals at the Olympics and placed seventh in the final at 2009 World Championship in Berlin. His first international medal was the silver won at the 2016 European Championship in Amsterdam. Then would come the world and European titles in 2017 and 2018, and six triumphs at different Diamond League meetings.
Across his career, Guliyev has raced in Spain six times. The first one was the previously mentioned at World Indoor Championship in Valencia in 2008, and the last one happened in 2019 at European Champion Clubs Cup in Castellón, where he won the 100m with 10.16 and the 200m with 20.32. Saturday 18 June will be his second time at Meeting de Madrid after placing sixth in the 100m with 10.28 in 2011, when the meet was still held in Moratalaz.
Don’t miss out on your chance to see the last world 200m champion born in Europe competing at Vallehermoso Stadium at the World Athletics Continental Tour Silver Meeting of Madrid. Secure your seats at https://www.enterticket.es/eventos/world-athletics-continental-tour-silver-madrid-2022-563018
