A summary of the morning session on Day 2 of the Ostrava 2011 European Athletics U23 Championships on Friday.

Tom Erling Kårbø won the first heat of the steeplechase in a personal best 8:42.40, but in third, 8:23 performer Sebastian Martos of Spain, looked ominously easy. The second heat was run at a much livelier pace giving eight men the chance to qualify for Sunday’s final. Poland’s Lukasz Oslizlo raced away from the field to clock a career best 8:38.28 while the top six in race two qualified for the final, including season leader, Abdelaziz Merzougui of France.

All three Russian medal favorites qualified for tomorrow morning’s 110m hurdles semi-finals with ease. As expected, though, Britain’s Laurence Clarke got amongst them on times by equalling Aleksey Dryomin’s 13.73 for joint fastest. Season leader, Konstantin Shabanov and Sergey Shubenkov were the other heat winners. A curiosity was the increasing head-wind varying from 0.3 for the first heat rising to -1.4 by the time of the fourth heat.

In the high jump, season pacesetters, Sergey Mudrov and Ukraine’s Bohdan Bondarenko went through without mishap. A surprise casualty was 2.22 performer, Britain’s David Smith, who managed no higher than 2.08.