Erica Bougard Looking for More Magic in Gotzis

By Adam Kopet

Erica Bougard finished third in the heptathlon at the 2018 Hypo Meeting in Gotzis, Austria, with a personal-best 6,725 points. She returns for the 2019 event, which begins Saturday, looking for another stellar performance.

However, Bougard will not have an easy path to improving her third-place finish from a year ago. Also in the competition are Great Britain's Katarina Johnson Thompson and Germany's Carolin Schafer, both of whom have strong records in the multis.

Belgium's Nafissatou Thiam is returning from a winter injury and will not open her season until next month at the Decastar competition in Talence, France. She became the third woman to score over 7,000 points at the 2017 Hypo Meeting.

Also competing in the heptathlon in Gotzis are the Canadian duo Georgia Ellenwood and Niki Oudenaarden.

The men's decathlon competition features Tim Ehrhardt, who set a personal best at last month's Bryan Clay Invitational with a score of 8,066 points. That stands fourth on the world list this year. He will be hoping the world class competition will push him to another personal best.

Included in that world class competition is Canada's Damian Warner, who is looking to become the third athlete to win five Gotzis titles. He has already improved his personal best in the shot put this year to 49-9 (15.16m).

Other athletes competing include Maicel Uibo of Estonia, Kai Kazmirek and Rico Freimuth of Germany, Dominik Distelberger of Austria, Niels Pittomvils of Belgium, Adam Sebastian Helcelet of the Czech Republic and Eelco Sintnicolaas of the Netherlands.

Additional information about the 2019 Hypo Meeting is available in Gabriella Pieraccini's preview for the IAAF.