Pawel Fajdek and DeAnna Price, winners of the hammer at the IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019 (© Getty Images)
Recently crowned world champions Pawel Fajdek of Poland and DeAnna Price of the USA topped the end-of-year standings for the 2019 IAAF Hammer Throw Challenge. Fajdek won the challenge for the fifth time, adding to victories in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017. For Price, it was her first finish atop the standings.
The 30-year-old Fajdek, who collected a fourth straight world title in Doha earlier this month, won handily, more than four points (or metres) ahead of Wojciech Nowicki, the challenge winner in 2018. Fajdek won 10 of 13 competitions overall in 2019, with each of those three defeats to Nowicki. Hungary's Bence Halasz, the world bronze medallist, was third in the season-long standings to equal his challenge finish from 2018.
The women's battle was close, with just 21 centimetres separating Price from Wang Zheng, the Chinese star who took bronze at the World Championships. Price, who this year marked her first appearance in year-end standings, tallied 226.55 points.
Wang, the challenge runner-up in 2017 and a distant seventh last year, collected 226.34 points, well clear of Poland's Joanna Fiodorow, the world silver medallist, who tallied 224.46 to finish third.
The scoring system takes each athlete’s three best marks from the series and equates metres to points. Prize money is awarded to the top 12 finishers at the end of the challenge. The athlete with the highest score wins US $30,000. In order to be ranked and earn prize money, an athlete must have taken part in a minimum of three meetings.
Final standings
Men
1 Pawel Fajdek (POL) 241.86
2 Wojciech Nowicki (POL) 237.47
3 Bence Halasz (HUN) 234.99
4 Quentin Bigot (FRA) 232.04
5 Nick Miller (GBR) 231.58
Women
1 DeAnna Price (USA) 226.55
2 Wang Zheng (CHN) 226.34
3 Joanna Fiodorow (POL) 224.46
4 Anita Wlodarczyk (POL) 224.37
5 Gwen Berry (USA) 224.26
Complete standings: Men | Women
IAAF
