GOTHENBURG, Aug 8: Francisco Fernandez of Spain won the men's 20 kilometres walk at the European athletics championships on Tuesday. The Olympic and world silver medallist finished the course around the streets of Gothenburg in 1hr 19min 09sec.

Valeriy Borchin of Russia took silver, 51sec off the pace, with Joao Vieira of Portugal coming in third.

Earlier, Germany's Ralf Bartels won the first gold of the championships on Monday, snatching victory in the shot put with his final effort.

Bartels, bronze medallist in Munich four years ago, took the title by two centimetres from former world champion Andrei Mikhnevich of Belarus with a best of 21.13 metres.

Mikhnevich, who had led the competition from the second round had to settle for silver with 21.11.

Denmark's Joachim Olsen was third with 21.09.

Meanwhile, defending champion Francis Obikwelu reached the men's 100 metres final on Tuesday by winning his semi-final in 10.19 seconds.

The Portuguese recovered from a slow start to beat Slovenian Matic Osovnikar into second place by four hundredths of a seconds, with Briton Mark Lewis-Francis third a further 0.07 of a second behind.

German Ronny Ostwald grabbed the fourth and final qualifying place of the heat by finishing in 10.40 seconds.

It was the third heat win in a row for Obikwelu, who is bidding to to become the first man to win both the 100 and 200 metres at the championships since Italy's Pietro Mennea in 1978.

Obikwelu's most likely rival, Frenchman Ronald Pognon, made it through by finishing the other semi-final in second place behind Russian Andrey Yepishin, who set a personal best of 10.12 seconds to finish first.

Pognon was only two hundredths behind Yepishin, with third placed Dariusz Kuc of Poland a further 0.09 behind.

Briton Dwain Chambers, who was stripped of his gold from the 2002 European championships after admitting he had taken the designer steroid THG (tetrahydrogestrinone) during that year, just scraped through with a fourth place with a 10.25 run from lane one.

Results of finals: