<p>A top-quality hammer showdown lit up day one of the rescheduled New Zealand Track &amp; Field Championships in Hastings on Friday (26) as Julia Ratcliffe defeated her Kiwi rival Lauren Bruce with a mighty Oceania record throw of 73.55m.</p>
<p>Since Bruce set the previous Oceania record with a huge five-metre-plus improvement and 73.47m mark at the same Mitre 10 Park venue back in September, she has emerged as New Zealand&rsquo;s pre-eminent hammer thrower.</p>
<p>However, Ratcliffe, the Commonwealth champion and the fourth-place finisher at the 2012 World U20 Championships, is a fantastic competitor and rose to the challenge magnificently at the modified two-day meet, which three weeks earlier had been postponed because of Covid-19 restrictions in New Zealand.</p>
<p>Returning to Hastings, where two months earlier she failed to register a mark with her three throws, Ratcliffe surprised herself by smashing her PB by more than a metre and surpassing the Olympic qualification mark in round one with a 73.40m effort, going out &ldquo;for a safe one&rdquo;.</p>
<p>Her confidence buoyed, in round four she then added a further 15 centimetres to that mark to better Bruce&rsquo;s Oceania record and seal a memorable competition.</p>
<p>Bruce performed solidly with a fourth-round best of 72.76m but today had to concede defeat to her more experienced rival, who secured national title number six.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It feels so good to get the Olympic qualification mark off my plate and I can finally focus on building up for Tokyo,&rdquo; Ratcliffe said.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It was just awesome. It was like the culmination of 16 years of training with Dave (coach and father) in the crowd. In the last week or so training has been up and down, so to keep it altogether was the big challenge. It was more than I could have hoped.&rdquo;</p>
<h3>Walsh collects 12th straight title</h3>
<p>Tom Walsh secured a 12th successive national shot title with a season&rsquo;s best effort and championship best performance of 21.79m.</p>
<p>Minus the absent Jacko Gill, who opted not to extend his domestic season to compete at nationals in order to start his preparation for the Tokyo Olympics, Walsh was never seriously threatened and cruised to a comfortable win.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m really happy with four of the throws today, I&rsquo;m starting to feel like I do when I throw far,&rdquo; said Walsh. &ldquo;I just wasn&rsquo;t quite nailing it off the hand.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I did exactly what I wanted to do today through the comp. Earlier in the season I was beating myself up through the competitions but I got myself out of the hole I&rsquo;d dug myself. I&rsquo;m happy with the way it went.&rdquo;</p>
<h3>Title No.17 for Adams</h3>
<p>Ten-time global champion Valerie Adams, who had been given a huge lift by securing her longest throw for five years with 19.65m at the Sir Graeme Douglas International in Auckland four weeks ago, claimed a record-equalling 17th national shot title.</p>
<p>Struggling to find any rhythm on a frustrating day, her best effort of 18.43m was delivered in round six.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It is really awesome to win title number 17 tonight but I&rsquo;m really gutted with how I performed tonight. But that&rsquo;s the name of the game, you have to perform the very best you can.&rdquo;</p>
<p>World U20 champion Maddison Wesche earned silver with 17.38m.</p>
<p>Away from the throws, Zoe Hobbs equalled the 28-year-old New Zealand women&rsquo;s 100m record of 11.32 (1.4m/s).&nbsp;The 23-year-old sprinter has enjoyed a dominant summer and chipped 0.02 from her previous best to claim a victory which evoked mixed emotions.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It is a relief, although it is bittersweet because it would have been nice to get that outright record,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;It will be nice to take that next step &ndash; the outright record is now only 0.01 away!&rdquo;</p>
<p>Triathlete Hayden Wilde successfully defended his national 5000m title in 13:43.53 to take out the 25-year-old championship best performance and offer further evidence of his pure running ability. Last month, the 23-year-old ran a 5000m PB of 13:29.47 in Hamilton and still harbours hopes of potentially appearing at the Tokyo Olympics in two sports.</p>
<p>Camille Buscomb's hopes of an ambitious and rarely achieved 800m-1500m-5000m treble faltered at the first hurdle as she had to settle for bronze in the two-lap event.</p>
<p>The 2019 World Championships 5000m and 10,000m 12th-place finisher was outclassed by Katherine Camp (2:06.50) with Buscomb a further 1.83 seconds back in bronze.</p>
<p>Buscomb returned just over three-and-a-half hours later, however, to secure her fourth national title in the 5000m (16:17.30). She returns on day two for a crack at the 1500m.</p>
<p>New Zealand men&rsquo;s high jump record-holder Hamish Kerr, who set his outright national record of 2.31m in Wellington last month, was a little below-par en route to winning his sixth national title with a best of 2.24m.</p>
<p>Shay Veitch scored an unlikely men&rsquo;s long jump and 100m double. The versatile 20-year-old athlete - who last year won 400m silver &ndash; leapt a wind-assisted 7.78m (2.4m/s) before just over an hour later returning to the track to collect the men&rsquo;s 100m title in a seriously depleted field. Veitch stopped the clock in 10.38 (3.8m/s).</p>
<p><strong>Steve Landells for World Athletics</strong></p>

A top-quality hammer showdown lit up day one of the rescheduled New Zealand Track & Field Championships in Hastings on Friday (26) as Julia Ratcliffe defeated her Kiwi rival Lauren Bruce with a mighty Oceania record throw of 73.55m.

Ratcliffe breaks Oceania hammer record with 73.55m in Hastings

Commonwealth champion Julia Ratcliffe delivers the highlight of the opening day of New Zealand's national championships.

<p>To anyone looking at the results from afar, Lauren Bruce&rsquo;s Oceania hammer record of 73.47m last September seemed something of an anomaly.</p>
<p>Her previous best was 68.14m, yet in one competition she had not only broken 70 metres for the first time in her career, but had also surpassed 73 metres.</p>
<p>But in the months that have followed, Bruce has shown that her record-breaking throw was no fluke and, with a string of nine 70-metre competitions, has firmly marked herself as one to watch.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, that five-metre improvement in Hastings to place sixth place on the 2020 world list, along with her subsequent Olympic qualifying marks, was unquestionably a dramatic rise to prominence for the 23-year-old Kiwi thrower. Yet to gain a greater understanding of the journey undertaken by the young hammer ace, it is impossible to ignore 2017 world shot put champion Tom Walsh.</p>
<p>In a spookily similar career path, the pair both hail from the small port city of Timaru (population 46,000) on New Zealand&rsquo;s picture postcard South Island. The duo both initially developed through the coaching acumen of Ian Baird and today are both guided by influential Australian Dale Stevenson.</p>
<p>Bruce&rsquo;s goal is to maintain her rate of progression and one day go on to achieve the same level of sustained global success enjoyed by Walsh.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Having qualified for Tokyo, this now puts me in a position to compete at every major championships,&rdquo; explains Bruce of her future ambitions. &ldquo;In the next few years they will come thick and fast and the biggest challenge will be using them to step closer to expressing my full potential. A big part of why I throw is trying to figure out that puzzle.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Bruce took up athletics at the age of eight, competing predominantly as a sprinter and jumper. But as a youngster, gymnastics was her primary sport.</p>
<p>She performed to a high standard and earned a national level silver medal on the uneven bars, but nine years ago she picked up a stress fracture of the back. Ruled out of sporting activity for six months and concerned gymnastics was taking a toll on her body, she quit and focused her energy on athletics.</p>
<p>Baird introduced Bruce to the hammer and she quickly developed into a promising &lsquo;leftie&rsquo; thrower.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I remember doing a couple of sessions and asking my coach if I could switch from spinning anti-clockwise to clockwise,&rdquo; she recalls. &ldquo;I am right handed throwing the discus and shot, but for whatever reason I found myself more comfortable rotating the other way for hammer, perhaps from my time spinning clockwise as a gymnast. As soon as I started throwing left-handed, it felt natural to me. I quickly improved and got sucked into the hammer.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The good body awareness from her gymnastics background, coupled with her natural strength, proved a winning combination and Bruce made an impact on the age-group scene, winning national titles in both hammer and discus.<br /><br /></p>
<p><img src="https://assets.aws.worldathletics.org/6059e5b7f565fc848a23d832.jpg" alt="" width="950" height="1049" /><br /><em>Lauren Bruce in action at the World U20 Championships Bydgoszcz 2016 (&copy; Getty Images)</em></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>In 2016 she earned selection to represent New Zealand in the discus and hammer at the World U20 Championships in Bydgoszcz. After setting a hammer PB of 60.35m at a low-key meeting in Germany just two weeks before the championships, she was optimistic of a good showing.</p>
<p>She underperformed in both events, though, hurling a best of 55.17m to place 23rd in hammer qualifying and falling almost seven meters shy of her best in the discus (42.30m) in 24th.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I was hugely disappointed,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;Going overseas to compete in a big event for the first time was a great experience and looking back it was hugely valuable. But at the time I didn&rsquo;t feel like I belonged in that company. It was a bit of a wake-up call.&rdquo;</p>
<p>The following year, on Baird&rsquo;s recommendation, Bruce joined the Christchurch-based coaching group of Dale Stevenson, who was achieving big results with Walsh.</p>
<p>Without question, the move to Stevenson has played an instrumental part in Bruce&rsquo;s subsequent success.</p>
<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s had a huge influence,&rdquo; explains Bruce. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s sat on both sides of the fence with having been an athlete to the highest level himself (he competed at the London 2012 Olympics in shot) which is incredibly valuable for us.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Obviously, in the past shot put has been more his thing but he has put a lot of time and energy into understanding the event, so he could help me. Over the last year to year and a half we&rsquo;ve made some huge progress.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Yet Bruce&rsquo;s road has been far from smooth. In 2018 she extended her PB to 62.42m during the domestic season in New Zealand but struggled to replicate that form during a trip to Europe.</p>
<p>The under-par results started to take a toll mentally and for a period she weighed up whether she wanted to continue in the sport.</p>
<p>&ldquo;My identity had become so wound up in the sport, I just couldn&rsquo;t let go of a bad competition or a bad training session,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;It got to the point I didn&rsquo;t even know if I enjoyed the sport anymore.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Bruce took three months away from the sport to recalibrate before returning to athletics. Slowly, her passion for the sport returned, although her future hammer success was not immediately apparent after opting to prioritise the discus in 2019.</p>
<p>She duly qualified in the discus for the World University Games but while there also took up the option of competing in the hammer. In Naples, Bruce underperformed in the discus, placing 20th, but bounced back to finish seventh in the hammer with 62.50m &ndash; just half a metre shy of her PB.</p>
<p>That competition triggered some critical changes which set Bruce on the road to success.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I came out of that competition feeling like I still didn&rsquo;t really belong out there,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what really got the ball rolling for me to make a mental shift to carry myself with more confidence.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Later that year, and in consultation with her coach, Bruce decided to focus on the hammer.</p>
<p>&ldquo;For a long time, I held on to always having something else alongside hammer,&rdquo; she explains. &ldquo;I realise now I liked the security of having another event to fall back on. If the hammer did not go well, I&rsquo;d channel my frustration into the discus.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I distinctly remember the conversation in the car park with my coach after training one day when he said &lsquo;you are going to have to choose one event; if you keep trying to do both you&rsquo;re not going to qualify for the Olympics at all&rsquo;.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Focusing solely on one event has given her the time and clear-eyed focus to make the necessary technical refinements. During the 2020 New Zealand summer season she added more than five metres to her to PB, going out to a best of 68.14m.</p>
<p>Then, coming out of lockdown last year, she made another important decision on her road to improvement by ditching her 25-hour a week job working for a food company to focus 100% on hammer.</p>
<p>Becoming a full-time athlete has led to huge gains in training, all of which resulted in that huge five-metre plus PB of 73.47m in Hastings &ndash; a moment which was much less of a surprise to her as it was for many others.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It was honestly more of a relief,&rdquo; she says of surpassing the Oceania record of 72.35m which had been set earlier in 2020 by fellow Kiwi Julia Ratcliffe, the Commonwealth champion. &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;ve known for some time I could throw farther than I had done previously. In training my distances had been slowly creeping up. To finally do that in a competition was further confirmation of this.&rdquo;<br /><br /></p>
<p><img src="https://assets.aws.worldathletics.org/6059e60cf565fc848a23d835.jpg" alt="" width="950" height="687" /><br /><em>Lauren Bruce, Valerie Adams and Kasandra Vegas at the 2016 New Zealand Championships (&copy; Getty Images)</em></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Training four to five times a week in the gym with three to four throwing sessions, Bruce admits her strength is her strength. Able to clean 125kg with the Olympic weights and snatch 100kg, she enjoys the challenge of chasing her new training partner Valerie Adams, the double Olympic champion, who has recently joined the group.</p>
<p>Bruce says her natural power allows her to occasionally &lsquo;bully&rsquo; the hammer but also admits she has recently made some real technical advancements.</p>
<p>During the New Zealand season her consistent 70-metre form has given her validation she is on the right track. Meanwhile, the motivation she gets from her rivalry with Ratcliffe has also acted as another spur.</p>
<p>The pair have elevated the women&rsquo;s hammer to one of the marquee events in New Zealand athletics &ndash; perhaps best illustrated by the fact in February&rsquo;s Porritt Classic it formed the concluding field event of the meet.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Normally the hammer is always pre-meet, so to be held as the final event shows how far we have come,&rdquo; says Bruce.</p>
<p>For the remainder of the New Zealand domestic season she is targeting a maiden national senior title and would also like to advance her Oceania record.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I would like to break my record again,&rdquo; says Bruce who, since throwing her Oceania record, has thrown beyond 70 metres in all nine of her subsequent competitions. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m getting close to going over 75m.&rdquo;<br /><br /></p>
<p><img src="https://assets.aws.worldathletics.org/6059e737d64730bd1c38c39f.jpg" alt="" width="950" height="633" /><br /><em>Lauren Bruce in action in the hammer (&copy; Alisha Lovrich)</em></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>With the Olympic qualification mark comfortably secured, she has some big aims for Tokyo but is not prepared to make any predictions.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We are still five months away from the Games and I know how much I&rsquo;ve improved over the previous five months, so I don&rsquo;t want to set a limit on what might be possible. I&rsquo;m more than capable of making the final, although in terms of how I want to perform, we&rsquo;ll just have to wait and see where I&rsquo;m at come August.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Yet it would be remiss not to mention Walsh and the role he has played in her progression.</p>
<p>&ldquo;As we come from similar backgrounds, we definitely have quite a bit in common and I&rsquo;d say I consider him somewhat of an older brother,&rdquo; Bruce explains. &ldquo;He is definitely someone I can go to for advice because he has such a wealth of knowledge and experience.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s pretty cool to have him around because he has shown the path you can take coming from a small town to competing on the world stage at the highest level.&rdquo;</p>
<p>A path it seems like Bruce is already treading.</p>
<p><strong>Steve Landells for World Athletics</strong></p>

To anyone looking at the results from afar, Lauren Bruce’s Oceania hammer record of 73.47m last September seemed something of an anomaly.

Now focused solely on hammer, Bruce looks to become global contender

<p>As this extraordinary year draws to a close, we look back at the key moments of 2020 in each area of the sport. The series continues today with a review of the throwing disciplines.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Women&rsquo;s shot put</h3>
<p>Despite turning 30 this summer, Auriol Dongmo was the revelation of the outdoor season. She came into 2020 with one single put beyond 18 metres in her career and left it as joint world leader &ndash; with world champion Gong Lijiao &ndash; at 19.53m.</p>
<p>Dongmo, who this year transferred from Cameroon to Portugal, won two World Athletics Continental Tour meetings and remained undefeated during the outdoor season. Statistically she backed up that massive PB with three more meets at 18.85m or better.</p>
<p>Gong produced the top mark of the year (19.70m) indoors in February in what was to be the lead up to the World Indoor Championships, originally planned for mid-March on her home soil in Nanjing. But the World Indoors had to be cancelled and with the Olympics postponed one year, Gong had just one outdoor competition this year, in which she equalled the world lead (19.53m).</p>
<p>With almost no international competitions available, many other of the top shot putters &ndash; just like Gong &ndash; only had a couple of local appearances or even skipped the outdoor season altogether. The number of athletes throwing beyond 18 metres was almost halved from last year; especially noticeable was the drop in the US presence, from 12 at 18m+ in 2019 to just three in 2020.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Men&rsquo;s shot put</h3>
<p>Following the narrowest of losses at the World Athletics Championships Doha 2019, USA&rsquo;s Ryan Crouser was easily the top shot putter in 2020.</p>
<p>The 28-year-old was unbeaten in all of his 11 competitions during the season and the only athlete to throw beyond 22 metres in 2020. Crouser did it in style, too, beating the 22-metre line in all but one of those competitions.</p>
<p>In July he threw a world-leading PB of 22.91m, moving to equal third on the world all-time list. Only two athletes &ndash; world record-holder Randy Barnes (23.12m) and Ulf Timmermann (23.06m) &ndash; have reached 23 metres, but Crouser is closing in on that barrier.<br /><br /></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Another shot put exhibition from <a href="https://twitter.com/RCrouserThrows?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RCrouserThrows</a>. <br /><br />He was over the 22-metre-line four times at the <a href="https://twitter.com/ZlataTretra?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ZlataTretra</a>; his 22.43m leads the throws action.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ContinentalTourGold?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ContinentalTourGold</a> <a href="https://t.co/7TdoO7H1hM">pic.twitter.com/7TdoO7H1hM</a></p>
&mdash; Continental Tour Gold (@ContiTourGold) <a href="https://twitter.com/ContiTourGold/status/1303458043036868610?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 8, 2020</a></blockquote>
<p><br />Barnes also holds the world indoor record at 22.66m from 1989, but Crouser also came really close to this mark when winning the US indoor title with 22.60m, moving to second on the world indoor all-time list.</p>
<p>While Crouser hasn&rsquo;t yet set a world record, he has already established himself as one of the greatest throwers ever. 105 throws beyond 22 metres is almost triple the number of 22-metre throws by Ulf Timmermann, the second-most prolific 22m thrower.</p>
<p>In 2020 Crouser had 54 measured throws with an average of 22.20m. This is the first time in shot put history when a thrower&rsquo;s average has been beyond 22 metres.</p>
<p>Crouser aside, 2020 marked a breakthrough season for Italy&rsquo;s Leonardo Fabbri, who threw a PB of 21.99m in Padua in August. World indoor champion Tom Walsh didn&rsquo;t compete outside New Zealand, but still managed to register a season&rsquo;s best of 21.70m. World champion Joe Kovacs competed just a handful of times, ending the year with a best of 21.30m in Zagreb.</p>
<p>Despite the obvious disruptions to the season, 17 men managed to throw beyond 21 metres during the outdoor season, which is slightly down on the number from last year (26) but equal with the figure from 2018.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Women&rsquo;s discus</h3>
<p>In the modern era, marks beyond 70 metres have been few and far between.</p>
<p>From 2000 onwards it took until 2014 for the first 70-metre performance. Since then, there had been just 12 such marks &ndash; 11 by Sandra Perkovic and one by Denia Caballero.</p>
<p>But on 1 August this year they were joined in the &rsquo;70-metre club&rsquo; by USA&rsquo;s Valarie Allman, who hit 70.15m on her opening attempt at a special throws meet in Rathdrum, Idaho. For Allman &ndash; who finished seventh at last year&rsquo;s World Championships in Doha &ndash; it was a huge improvement as her previous PB of 67.15m had been her only previous throw beyond 66 metres. Allman opened and closed her season with that competition, so confirmation of her newfound capacity will have to wait until 2021.</p>
<p>No one else in the world threw beyond 66 metres this year, but double Olympic champion Sandra Perkovic made a couple of notable appearances on home soil, throwing 65.93m in Split in March and 64.67m to win at the Continental Tour Gold meeting in Zagreb in September.</p>
<p>World champion Yaime Perez and fellow Cuban Denia Caballero enjoyed a few duels at the start of the year. Perez won all but one of their clashes, ending with a season&rsquo;s best of 64.76m.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Men&rsquo;s discus</h3>
<p>Results wise, throwing disciplines seemed to lose very little at the top during the otherwise thin season. The men&rsquo;s discus was no different with several athletes consistently hitting good marks.</p>
<p>Daniel St&aring;hl was the clear No.1 discus thrower in the world during 2020.</p>
<p>The 28-year-old Swede competed 20 times in 2020 and recorded 18 victories. Between June and September, St&aring;hl won 15 competitions in a row, hitting 70 metres twice and 69 metres five times.</p>
<p>Not counting a competition in June when St&aring;hl failed to register a valid throw, 2017 world champion Andrius Gudzius was the only athlete to beat the giant Swede, doing so at the Continental Tour meeting in Berlin (66.72m to 65.89m). Gudzius enjoyed a strong season, throwing beyond 68 metres on four occasions.</p>
<p>Several other athletes were near or beyond the 70-metre line during the season, but a few of them only achieved it once and it remains to be the seen if they really can back up these one-time big throws in the future.</p>
<p>Colombian Mauricio Ortega threw a South American record of 70.29m in Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal, in June, but did not get close to that result in other meetings. Same goes for Juan Jos&eacute; Caicedo, who set an Ecuadorian record of 69.60m at that same competition. Iceland&rsquo;s Gudni Valur Gudnason is another example; he set a national record of 69.35m in September.</p>
<p>Jamaica&rsquo;s world silver medallist Fedrick Dacres stayed home all year, reaching a 69.67m season&rsquo;s best in February. Slovenia&rsquo;s Kristjan Čeh, meanwhile, emerged as a serious contender. The 21-year-old broke the Slovenian record with 68.75m in June and consistently threw beyond 65 metres at big invitational competitions against top opponents.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Women&rsquo;s hammer</h3>
<p>World record-holder Anita Wlodarczyk took the year off, as did wold champion DeAnna Price once it became clear that the Tokyo Olympics would be postponed until 2021. The other world medallists, Joanna Fiodorow and Wang Zheng, meanwhile, had low-key seasons.</p>
<p>Instead it was World Championships sixth-place finisher Alexandra Tavernier who had the strongest season with six meets, six wins and all competitions beyond 72.50m. She twice broke her own French record, throwing 74.94m in July and 75.23m in September.</p>
<p>Tavernier just missed registering the world-leading mark as that honour went to Hanna Malyshchyk who threw 22 centimetres farther &ndash; 75.45m &ndash; in February. But Tavernier got the better of the Belarusian in their only clash of 2020, winning in Szekesfehervar with 73.09m to Malyshchyk&rsquo;s 70.59m.<br /><br /></p>
<p><img src="https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Carousel2/10340a06-a413-4625-8837-50a9d8688385.jpg?cachebuster=aac3d2ad-2100-4b58-bb60-67c4eaf1004a" alt="" width="950" height="570" /></p>
<p><br />Tavernier this year also lost her No.3 position on the world U20 all-time list to Finland&rsquo;s Silja Kosonen, who, at the age of 17, threw 71.34m in July. The world U20 record has stood to China&rsquo;s Zhang Wenxiu at 73.24m since 2005 but Kosonen has one more year as an U20 so could move further up the all-time list.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Men&rsquo;s hammer</h3>
<p>There may not have been any truly huge marks in the men&rsquo;s hammer this year, but two athletes managed to surpass 80 metres, one of them doing so for the first time in their career.</p>
<p>USA&rsquo;s Rudy Winkler ended the season as the surprise world leader. The 26-year-old, whose previous best of 77.06m was set in the qualifying round at last year&rsquo;s World Championships, threw 80.70m in July. Winkler competed two more times, but while his throws landed beyond 80 metres (80.72m and 80.07m), both results were achieved in a downhill facility in Middletown, New York.</p>
<p>Three-time world bronze medallist Wojciech Nowicki was the most consistent thrower this summer. The 31-year-old won his first four meets and then placed second behind fellow Pole Pawel Fajdek in the last two. Nowicki had two competitions beyond 80 metres in August within the space of three days, throwing 80.09m in Chorz&oacute;w and then an 80.28m season&rsquo;s best to win the Polish title.</p>
<p>Fajdek, winner of the past four world titles, closed the season well with three wins and a 79.81m season&rsquo;s best.</p>
<p>World bronze medallist Bence Hal&aacute;sz of Hungary competed mainly in small competitions at home. He won the Hungarian title with a 79.88m personal best in August, and placed second in Szekesfehervar and Ch&oacute;rzow.</p>
<p>There was another newcomer to the hammer scene in the form of Aaron Kangas. The Finn won all of his 11 meets during the season, all of them in his home country, topped by a personal best of 79.05m in Espoo in August.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Women&rsquo;s javelin</h3>
<p>In contrast to the other throwing events, nine of the top 10 women from 2019 competed at a high level also this year.</p>
<p>Only world champion Kelsey-Lee Barber was missing in action, opting instead to focus exclusively on training for 2021. The other two World Championships medallists from 2019 &ndash; China&rsquo;s Liu Shiyin and Lyu Huihui &ndash; topped the world list with distances beyond 67 metres.</p>
<p>Unfortunately there were few opportunities for the top throwers from different countries to go head-to-head. The main encounter took place at the Continental Tour Gold meeting in Ostrava where 39-year old world record-holder Barbora Spotakova threw 65.19m to once again triumph over the younger generation, represented on this occasion by Maria Andrzejczyk, Nikola Ogrodnikova, Lina Muze and Sara Kolak.</p>
<p>This year also marked a big breakthrough for Greece&rsquo;s Elina Tzengko who, at the age of 17, threw 63.96m at a meeting in Ioannina. It was 10 centimetres farther than the world U20 record, but her mark could not be ratified. Nevertheless, Tzengko backed up that performance with marks beyond 61 metres in her other competitions this year.</p>
<p>Tzengko also proved herself as a competitor; she threw 62.21m in Kladno in September, losing only to Spotakova and Ogrodnikova and defeating Andrzejczyk and double Olympic finalist Madara Palameika.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h3>Men&rsquo;s javelin</h3>
<p>Only one of the top names really excelled in the javelin this season.</p>
<p>Germany&rsquo;s Johannes Vetter was the only man beyond 90 metres in 2020. And the 2017 world champion did just creep over the 90-metre line; he absolutely crushed it.<br /><br /></p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iu-VANtP78Q" width="100%" height="450" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><br />The 27-year-old had an almost perfect season with a total of five throws at 90.00m or farther. His only disappointment was his season opener in July when he failed to register a valid throw, but he followed that with nine straight wins.</p>
<p>He first surpassed the 90-metre line in Turku in June with his opener landing at 91.49m, his best throw in two years and three months. His next 90-metre meeting was in Chorz&oacute;w two weeks later when he won with 90.86m and had another throw landing at exactly 90.00m.</p>
<p>Vetter returned to Chorz&oacute;w in September and hit a crazy 97.76m national record in round three, the second-best throw in history and less than a metre from Jan Zelezny&rsquo;s 24-year-old world record of 98.48m. Another monster in the next round, 94.84m, underlined that the Czech&rsquo;s record is finally in jeopardy.</p>
<p>Many top names were totally absent and for others their season was really short. India&rsquo;s world U20 record-holder and 2016 world U20 champion Neeraj Chopra competed only once, throwing 87.86m in South Africa in January.Towards the end of the year, meanwhile, South Africa&rsquo;s Rocco van Rooyen smashed his PB with 87.62m in November to end the year at third place on the world list.</p>
<p><strong>Mirko Jalava (men&rsquo;s disciplines) and A Lennart Julin (women&rsquo;s disciplines) for World Athletics</strong></p>

A look back at the key moments of 2020 in the throws

2020 review: throws

<p>In anticipation, few events at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games seemed as predictable as the women&rsquo;s hammer.</p>
<p>World record-holder and world champion Mihaela Melinte of Romania and her closest rival, Olga Kuzenkova of Russia, had a lock on the gold and silver medals with only the order to be decided. The rest were battling for the bronze medal.</p>
<p>If that was the pre-ordained order, someone forgot to tell Kamila Skolimowska, who rose to the occasion to take the most unexpected gold medal of the Games. A month short of her 18th birthday and already world U18 champion and world U20 record-holder, the Polish teen may clearly have been one for the future &ndash; but few expected the future to arrive on 29 September 2000.</p>
<p>Skolimowska&rsquo;s victory completed a hammer double for Poland. Szymon Ziolkowski had taken the men&rsquo;s gold medal a few days earlier. Ziolkowski himself had just turned 24, though that seemed to make him almost a doddering veteran alongside his co-gold medallist.</p>
<p>Sydney was the first Olympics at which the women&rsquo;s hammer had been contested. The event had made its World Championships debut in Seville the previous year &ndash; Melinte and Kuzenokova the gold and silver medallists, respectively &ndash; and been introduced at European and Commonwealth level a year before that.</p>
<p>Skolimowska and Ziolkowski both established legacies, especially so in the case of Skolimowska. Before Sydney, Poland had taken just one Olympic and one World Championships bronze medal in men&rsquo;s hammer. In the most recent decade, Polish throwers Pawel Fajdek and Wojcech Nowicki have been dominant forces.</p>
<p>Skolimowska&rsquo;s impact was just as pronounced, with a direct link to 2012 and 2016 Olympic champion Anita Wlodarczyk, who has dominated the event throughout the past 10 years, bringing others along in her wake.</p>
<p>Tragically, Skolimowska has not been around to enjoy this success. In February 2009, she died suddenly after suffering a pulmonary embolism while training on Portugal&rsquo;s Algarve coast. Fittingly, Wlodarczyk won the first of her (so far) four world titles later that year in Berlin.<br /><br /></p>
<p><img src="https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/Original/fb3784d5-503f-4d79-9ca6-d43646d3c5af.jpg" alt="" width="950" height="662" /></p>
<h2>Sydney 2000: the lead-up</h2>
<p>As noted already, Skolimowska was not a gold medal fancy coming into Sydney 2000, but she was clearly an athlete of promise, a young thrower in an even younger event. She became European U20 champion at the age of 14, world U18 champion and a World Championships representative at 16.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, Skolimowska was not ranked in the likely top 10 in <em>Track &amp; Field News</em>&rsquo; preview, possibly reflecting her youth and her DNQ in Seville. Some impressive performances may have just missed the publishing deadline, too. Skolimowska threw a world U20 record of 70.66m in late August and defeated one of the medal favourites, Kirsten Munchow, just a week before the Games.</p>
<p>Still, even with Skolimowska coming to Sydney in the best form of her brief career, Melinte and Kuzenkova had more than four metres on her on that year&rsquo;s world list and boasted the year&rsquo;s 10 best throws between them. France&rsquo;s Manuela Montebrun was third on the list at 71.18m with Skolimowska fourth.</p>
<h2>Sydney 2000: the competition</h2>
<p>Kamila Skolimowska was ready to throw her best when the Olympic competition began. In pulling off an upset, though, it helps if things fall your way. She took care of what she could control, throwing 66.30m in the first qualifying pool behind Kuzenkova&rsquo;s overall lead of 70.60m.</p>
<p>Then things started to happen. Melinte had warmed up with the others in the second pool but no sooner had the throwers entered the stadium than she was belatedly informed of an earlier doping infraction and escorted back out. The Romanian team had been advised but the information had not been passed on to Melinte.</p>
<p>When throwing did get under way, Montebrun, who had thrown 71.18m in France three weeks earlier, could manage no farther than 57.77m. Suddenly two of the top four throwers for the year were out of contention.</p>
<p>Australia&rsquo;s Debbie Sosimenko led for two rounds in the final two days later. Despite fervent home crowd support, however, she could not improve on her opening 67.95m and finished fifth.</p>
<p>Skolimowska fouled her first throw, produced a 66.33m effort in the second but then upped the ante in the third round with a world U20 record of 71.16m to take the lead. Still, Kuzenkova threatened: a throw anywhere near her season&rsquo;s best, much less her outright best, would suffice. She moved to the silver medal position with 69.64m in the third round, then improved to 69.77m with her fourth throw.</p>
<p>But when she most needed to step up, the Russian thrower fouled her final two attempts and the first Olympic gold medal in the women&rsquo;s hammer belonged to Skolimowska. 35 days before her 18th birthday, she was Olympic champion.</p>
<p>&ldquo;While you see a chance, take it,&rdquo; the song goes. Skolimowska soon affirmed the truth of the adage. At the World U20 Championships in Chile, a few weeks later, she failed to qualify for the final. The following year she was fourth at the World Championships in Edmonton, then came back to Australia for two more big wins at the Goodwill Games in Brisbane and the IAAF Grand Prix Final in Melbourne.<br /><br /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Folimpijski%2Fvideos%2F3301029639982767%2F&amp;show_text=0&amp;width=800" width="800" height="450" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><br />The youngest-ever Olympic hammer champion finished fifth in defence of her title in Athens in 2004. Either side of that, she earned European silver in 2002 and European bronze in 2006. She returned to Athens in 2006 for the World Cup, winning with a PB of 75.29m. She extended her lifetime best to 76.83m in Doha in May 2007, moving to fourth on the world all-time list at that time.</p>
<p>At the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, in what would be her final international championships appearance, she failed to record a valid throw in the final. Her successor, Wlodarczyk, finished fourth.</p>
<h2>London 2012: Wlodarczyk picks up the Skolimowska&rsquo;s gauntlet</h2>
<p>With a world title and world record already to her name, Wlodarczyk went on to win the first of two Olympic gold medals in London in 2012.</p>
<p>Wlodarczyk also, quite literally, stepped into Skolimowska&rsquo;s shoes and put her fate in her late teammate&rsquo;s hands. As reported by Jon Mulkeen and Marta Mikiel for World Athletics in 2014:</p>
<p>&ldquo;(In London) Wlodarczyk wore throwing shoes and gloves that used to belong to her old friend, given to her by Skolimowska&rsquo;s family.</p>
<p>&ldquo;&rsquo;When I entered the Olympic stadium in London, I asked Kamila to be with me,&rsquo; said Wlodarczyk, whose original silver medal at those Games was upgraded to gold with the eventual disqualification of Tatyana Lysenko.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I won the medal thanks to her and I dedicated it to her.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Four years later, Wlodarczyk retained her title at the Rio 2016 Games, spectacularly crowning one of the morning sessions with a world record of 82.29m.</p>
<p><strong>Len Johnson for World Athletics</strong></p>

Remembering Kamila Skolimoska, the first Olympic women's hammer throw champion, on the anniversary of her historic victory at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

Twenty years after her Olympic triumph, Skolimowska's legacy lives on

<p><br />Alexandra Tavernier broke the French record in the hammer to highlight the <strong>Kladno Throws and Kladno Memorials</strong>, a <strong>World Athletics Continental Tour Bronze</strong> meeting in Kladno, Czech Republic, on Wednesday (16).</p>
<p>Dominating the competition, the 26-year-old 2015 world bronze medallist reached 75.24m in the fourth round to take down the national record of 74.94m she set in July. Tavernier followed up with 75.12m and 74.71m efforts in rounds five and six to piece together the finest series of her career.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Action in the throws figured prominently in the late afternoon action.</p>
<p>Two-time Olympic javelin champion Barbora Spotakova threw a meeting record of 64.34m in the first round to claim her fourth victory in five competitions this season. Her compatriot Nikola Ogrodnikova was second with 62.22m, to edge Elina Tzengo of Greece by a lone centimetre.</p>
<p>Christos Frantzeskakis of Greece won the men's hammer with 75.92m ahead of Hungary's 2012 Olympic champion Krisztian Pars who reached 73.28m. Tavernier's younger brother Hugo was third with a 72.28m personal best.</p>
<p>Gatis Cakss of Latvia won the men's javelin with 82.19m, Colombia's Mauricio Ortega the discus with 63.61m and Czech Tomas Stanek the shot put with 20.19m.</p>
<p>On the track, Egyptian 100m and 200m record-holder Bassant Hemida took the sprint double, winning the 100m in 11.23 and 200m in 22.91, the performance in the shorter dash clipping 0.08 from the 100m national standard she set in Rabat last year. Both were also meeting records.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Isabelle Boffey of Great Britain won the 800m in 2:01.88, a personal best, with Finland's Sara Kuivisto second in 2:02.28.</p>
<p><strong>Bob Ramsak for World Athletics</strong></p>

Alexandra Tavernier broke the French record in the hammer to highlight the Kladno Throws and Kladno Memorials, a World Athletics Continental Tour Bronze meeting in Kladno, Czech Republic, on Wednesday (16).

Tavernier breaks French hammer record in Kladno

<p><br />Today marks the anniversaries of three very significant historic world records which were all set in 1960 in Walnut, California.</p>
<p>&lsquo;The Glorious Twelfth&rsquo; of August, the traditional date in the UK for the start of the grouse shooting season, in 1960 saw three men hit the ultimate target of a world record in their events during the USA&rsquo;s Olympic team final test meet before the Rome Olympic Games.</p>
<p>In Walnut, Ralph Boston surpassed Jesse Owens&rsquo; 25-year-old long jump mark, Bill Nieder became the world&rsquo;s first 20-metre shot putter and Hal Connolly let fly the first hammer to land 70 metres or beyond.</p>
<p>Here is how the evening panned out&hellip;</p>
<h3><br />18:55 Hammer throw</h3>
<p>Hal Connolly had been hammer world record-holder since a similar Olympic test event in Los Angeles on 2 November 1956 when he threw 68.54m to improve the world mark of Mikhail Krivonosov by more than a metre. At the end of the month in Melbourne 1956, Connolly beat the Belarussian Soviet to the Olympic title. Connolly most famously came away with a prize greater than gold from those Games, meeting, falling in love with and, three months later, marrying Czech Olga Fikotova, the Olympic discus champion.</p>
<p><img src="https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/LargeL/7fa1ca08-c2a5-4119-a1e7-f1d8fc8c7a13.jpg?cachebuster=c316aa79-d51c-4081-8287-3336af91a41a" alt="Hel Connolly (Getty Images)" width="600" height="400" /></p>
<p>Two years later Connolly had improved his world record to 68.68m and it was this distance which he smashed in Walnut on 12 August. In the first round he came 10 centimetres close to the record and two attempts later blasted out his 7.26kg implement to 70.33m.</p>
<p>While Connolly finished eighth at the Olympic Games in Rome and sixth four years later in Tokyo, he continued to improve and hold the world record until September 1965 when it was beaten by Hungary&rsquo;s Gyula Zsiv&oacute;tzky. Connolly&rsquo;s world record was by then 71.26m set in June that year in the same lucky circle in Walnut.</p>
<h3><br />19:45 Long jump</h3>
<p>Jesse Owens long jumped 8.13m (1.5m/s) in Ann Arbor on 15 April 1935 to become the world&rsquo;s first eight-metre jumper. He took only one jump in the competition, part of his legendary and unmatched 45-minute world record spree in which he set or equalled six world records.</p>
<p>Would even Owens, who didn&rsquo;t particularly care for the long jump and rarely practised it, have imagined that by the beginning of 1960, no one would have surpassed his mark?</p>
<p>Owens&rsquo; 8.13m, like Bob Beamon&rsquo;s 8.90m and now increasingly Mike Powell&rsquo;s current 8.95m world record, took on a mystic aura. There were similarities with the four-minute mile, a psychological as much as a physical barrier.</p>
<p><img src="https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/LargeL/c500ecea-ed1a-4989-ac16-922f4f3817aa.jpg?cachebuster=321686e0-cc4d-4bc6-b98f-90d7435f9e21" alt="Ralph Boston (Getty Images)" width="600" height="400" /></p>
<p>On 12 August 1960, going by the bare results, Ralph Boston&rsquo;s competition does not seem to have begun with a lot of promise as a 6.96m leap was recorded in the first round. But statistics can be deceiving; Boston had fallen back on a jump of 8.18m. When 7.94m on his second attempt was followed by 8.07m and 7.96m, it was clear to all that Boston was in form. His fourth-round leap of 8.21m (0.0m/s) sealed Boston&rsquo;s place in history, perhaps more than winning the Olympic gold medal (8.12m) the following month in Rome.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I thought I had gone over 26 feet (7.9248m) but I didn&rsquo;t think it was that far,&rdquo; was Boston&rsquo;s comment about his record jump.</p>
<p>Boston was to improve the world record another five times in his career, ending with a best of 8.35m in Modesto in 1965. He took silver behind Lynn Davies when defending his Olympic title in Tokyo in 1964, and in 1968 took bronze in the wake of Beamon&rsquo;s equally historic world record moment in Mexico City.</p>
<h3><br />20:00 Shot put</h3>
<p>In a century of shot putting which was largely dominated by US athletes, the 1950s and 1960s could be argued to have been a golden era. Bill Neider, at the turn of those two decades, was at the forefront. Silver behind Perry O&rsquo;Brien at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, Neider was to go one place better in Rome at the end of August 1960.</p>
<p>However, it looked at one point in 1960 that Neider would not even make the Olympic team. At the USA Olympic Trials, despite having recaptured the world record from Dallas Long with 19.99m on 2 April, Neider could only place fourth. It was only after the trials third-place finisher Dave Davis suffered a wrist injury, and Neider&rsquo;s performance on 12 August, that he got the final spot on the team.</p>
<p>When Nieder&rsquo;s fourth-round put in Walnut rocketed out to 20.06m, it really was a &lsquo;Glorious Twelfth&rsquo; of August for the University of Kansas graduate, who in the process set his third and final career world record.</p>
<p><img src="https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/LargeL/e0a71b60-c727-41d3-a0f7-932de3c0cce4.jpg?cachebuster=f9187f8b-1b00-4b0b-b198-94f18bf4e764" alt="Bill Nieder" width="600" height="400" /></p>
<p>It was widely reported shortly before the 1960 Rome Olympic Games that Nieder had a practise put of 20.44m in training.</p>
<p>In the final, Neider continued a close and vehement rivalry with O&rsquo;Brien, his Olympic record of 19.68m defeating the defending champion.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We carried on quite a duel,&rdquo; said Nieder later, &ldquo;and no, it wasn&rsquo;t just for fun.&rdquo;</p>
<h3><br />And 'That's not all folks'!</h3>
<p>The record-setting spree in Walnut on 12 August 1960 didn&rsquo;t quite finish with the shot put. Later that evening, at 21:40, Richard &lsquo;Rink&rsquo; Babka equalled the world discus record. His throw of 59.91m tied the mark that had been set one year prior by Poland&rsquo;s Edmund Piatkowski.</p>
<p>Babka went on to take the silver medal at the Olympic Games later that year, beaten only by the great Al Oerter. Babka&rsquo;s record mark was beaten one year later, and although he never regained the world record, he went on to set a lifetime best of 63.93m in 1968.</p>
<p>Finally, in the very last event of the evening, the men's mile relay (4x440 yards), a USA 'A' quartet anchored by Jack Yerman with a time of 3:05.6 took just under 2 seconds off the world record (3:07.3 / 1956), also set by USA. The USA 'B' line-up, brought home by Glenn Davis, were below the old mark too with 3:06.1.</p>
<h3><br />Also on this day...</h3>
<p>On this day of extraordinary world record milestones, several other historic marks have been set</p>
<p>1933: on a straight 200m track in Budapest, USA&rsquo;s Ralph Metcalfe produced a 200m world record-equalling run of 20.6.</p>
<p>1933: Also, in Budapest, USA's John Morriss with 14.4 equalled the world record for 110m hurdles.</p>
<p>1949: Belgium&rsquo;s Gaston Reiff became the first man to cover 3000m within eight minutes, clocking a world record of 7:58.8 in Gavle.</p>
<p>1972: a US quartet in Champaign set a world record for the 4x440 yards (4x402.336m) of 3:33.9.</p>
<p>1975: John Walker became the first athlete to run the mile in under 3:50. With his 3:49.4 run in Gothenburg, the Kiwi took just over one and half seconds off Filbert Bayi&rsquo;s world record set just three months earlier.</p>
<p>1987: In Viareggio, not only did Italy&rsquo;s Alessandro Andrei add 27 centimetres to Udo Beyer&rsquo;s 22.64m shot put world record (1986), he did so with three records in the same competition: 22.72m (third round), 22.84m (fourth) and 22.91m (fifth).</p>
<p><strong>Chris Turner for World Athletics Heritage</strong></p>
<p><em>with special thanks to Track &amp; Field News for pointing out the 4x440yds record.</em></p>

Today marks the anniversaries of three very significant historic world records which were all set in 1960 in Walnut, California.

The glorious twelfth – a day of world record landmarks

<p><br />World 100m champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Olympic champion Elaine Thompson-Herah both continued their good form at the fourth Velocity Fest meeting in Kingston, Jamaica.</p>
<p>Following an 11.28 (-2.7m/s) run in the heats, Fraser-Pryce clocked 10.87 (1.4m/s) in the second round to jump to the top of this year&rsquo;s world list. Just minutes later, Thompson-Herah came close to matching that time as she sped to 10.88 (0.3m/s) to win her race.<br /><br /></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/OhJeIuF4dqg" width="500" height="280" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><br />World silver medallists Fedrick Dacres and Shanieka Ricketts were also in action in the Jamaican capital. Dacres won the men&rsquo;s discus with 64.45m, while Ricketts won the women&rsquo;s triple jump with 14.21m.</p>
<p>The fifth Velocity Fest meeting will be held on Sunday (9) with Fraser-Pryce and Thompson-Herah both entered for the 200m.</p>
<h3><br />Poland&rsquo;s leading throwers out in force in Spala</h3>
<p>Many of Poland&rsquo;s top athletes were in action at the Skolimowska Throws Festival in Spala on Saturday (8) as four-time world champion Pawel Fajdek and European champion Wojciech Nowicki renewed their rivalry in the hammer.</p>
<p>Theirs is one of the longest and most hotly contested domestic rivalries within the sport, dating back to their teenage years. While Fajdek leads in their career head-to-head record, Nowicki has levelled the score in recent years. Since the start of 2018, Nowicki has won 11 of their 24 clashes, including the 2018 European Championships.</p>
<p>But while Nowicki ended 2019 as the world leader, Fajdek successfully defended his world title and won eight of their 12 duels.</p>
<p>Both men opened their 2020 campaigns today in Spala and Nowicki came out on top, winning with 78.50m. He led from the outset, opening with 77.08m before sending his next five efforts beyond 78 metres. Any of his throws would have been enough to win as Fajdek finished second with a solid 76.77m.</p>
<p>In the U20 men&rsquo;s competition, Dawid Pilat added almost a metre to the Polish U20 record he set in June with the 6kg implement, throwing 76.55m.</p>
<p>The women&rsquo;s hammer was of a similar high standard. 2017 world bronze medallist Malwina Kopron threw 74.18m to comfortably beat World University Games bronze medallist Katarzyna Furmanek (70.74m) and world silver medallist Joanna Fiodorow (66.28m).</p>
<p>Elsewhere, Michal Haratyk won the men&rsquo;s shot put from Konrad Bukowiecki, 21.45m to 20.36m, while 2015 world champion Piotr Malachowski won a close discus contest from Robert Urbanek, 64.87m to 64.73m. In her first competition of the year, Polish record-holder Maria Andrejczyk won the javelin with 62.04m.</p>
<h3><br />Dongmo extends Portuguese record, Ehammer's breakthrough continues</h3>
<p>On a busy weekend of national championships across Europe, there were some notable marks in Portugal, Switzerland and Germany.</p>
<p>On the first day of action at the Portuguese Championships in Lisbon, Auriol Dongmo added another 26 centimetres to the national shot put record she set in June. Her winning heave of 19.53m is the best throw in the world so far this year.</p>
<p><img src="https://media.aws.iaaf.org/media/LargeL/829fd309-b5f3-4f64-9773-8ab33228a8db.jpg?cachebuster=d3a00c46-271b-4507-a7fc-b0e0adb56526" alt="Auriol Dongmo" width="600" height="400" /></p>
<p>Three women jumped beyond 14 metres in the triple jump, and in a close contest just 16 centimetres separated the top three competitors. Patricia Mamona won with 14.26m (2.0m/s) with Evelise Veiga taking second place with a wind-assisted 14.16m and Susana Costa placing third (14.10m).</p>
<p>World silver medallist Joao Vieira won the men&rsquo;s 3000m race walk in 11:45.85, while Ana Cabecinha took the women&rsquo;s title in 12:43.01.</p>
<p>At the Swiss Combined Events Championships in Langenthal, Simon Ehammer continued his impressive breakthrough into the senior ranks. Having already surpassed eight metres in the long jump and 8000 points in the decathlon this year, he added more than 200 points to his PB to win the decathlon title.</p>
<p>With big PBs in the 100m (10.50), shot put (13.75m) and 400m (47.27), he was on pace for a big score from the outset. His momentum continued throughout the second day as the 20-year-old recorded three more PBs, including 13.73 in the 110m hurdles, and he ended his competition with a lifetime best of 8231, the best score in the world this year and just 103 points shy of the Swiss record set 37 years ago.</p>
<p>Annik Kalin, also just 20 years of age, won the heptathlon title with 6167, just three points shy of the PB she set last month.</p>
<p>At the German Championships in Brunswick, 2017 world champion Johannes Vetter won the men's javelin by more than 10 metres, topping the contest with 87.36m. European silver medallist Andreas Hofmann was a distant second with 77.35m.</p>
<p>Competing off a shortened approach and jumping into a headwind in what was her first outdoor long jump competition of 2020, world champion Malaika Mihambo won the long jump with 6.71m (-1.2m/s).</p>
<p>Deniz Almas backed up his recent 100m PB. One week after clocking 10.08 on Weinheim&rsquo;s fast track, the 23-year-old ran 10.09 (0.1m/s) in Brunswick to add the national 100m crown to the 60m title he won indoors in February.</p>
<p>The other highlight from the first day of action came from European champion Christin Hussong, who won the women&rsquo;s javelin with 63.93m.</p>
<p>At the Lithuanian Championships in Palanga, 2017 world champion Andrius Gudzius dominated the discus with 68.16m. Edis Matusevicius won the men&rsquo;s javelin with 81.38m and Dovile Kilty took the women&rsquo;s triple jump title with 14.18m (1.2m/s).</p>
<p><strong>Jon Mulkeen for World Athletics</strong></p>

Many of Poland’s top athletes were in action at the Skolimowska Throws Festival in Spala on Saturday (8) as four-time world champion Pawel Fajdek and European champion Wojciech Nowicki renewed their rivalry in the hammer.

Speedy times from Fraser-Pryce and Thompson-Herah

<p><br />Four-time world hammer champion Pawel Fajdek, double world pole vault medallist Piotr Lisek and European 400m champion Justyna Swiety-Ersetic are just some of the Polish stars set to compete at the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial, a <strong>World Athletics Continental Tour Gold</strong> meeting, in Silesia on 6 September.</p>
<p>Named in honour of the late 2000 Olympic hammer champion, the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial has always showcased Poland&rsquo;s top athletes and international stars, especially in the hammer.</p>
<p>Fajdek has won the men&rsquo;s hammer at six previous editions of the meeting. His first win came in 2011 and in 2014 he set the meeting record of 83.48m, a mark that was also a Polish record. That marked the start of five consecutive wins at the Skolimowska Memorial, but his run came to an end last year when he was narrowly beaten by European champion Wojciech Nowicki.</p>
<p>Lisek has also notched up numerous victories at the Skolimowska Memorial, winning in 2015, 2018 and 2019. His win in Silesia last year was his final competition before heading to Doha for the World Championships, where he went on to earn the bronze medal.</p>
<p>Swiety-Ersetic is another regular at the meeting. The European champion has finished runner-up in the 400m at the past two editions, and just missed out on victory last year when finishing 0.07 behind Allyson Felix, so she is keen to come out on top this year.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I love the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial,&rdquo; said Swiety-Ersetic. &ldquo;I always get good results at this meeting because the organisers make sure that the competitors are of the highest calibre.&rdquo;</p>
<p>World 1500m bronze medallist Marcin Lewandowski, European shot put champion Michal Haratyk, 2017 European indoor shot put champion Konrad Bukowiecki and European indoor 60m champion Ewa Swoboda are also set to compete at the meeting.</p>
<p><strong>Organisers for World Athletics</strong></p>

Four-time world hammer champion Pawel Fajdek, double world pole vault medallist Piotr Lisek and European 400m champion Justyna Swiety-Ersetic are just some of the Polish stars set to compete at the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial, a World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting, in Silesia on 6 September.

Top Polish stars sign up for Skolimowska Memorial

<p><br />It was a busy weekend &ndash; in relative terms, of course &ndash; across Europe with competitions taking place in Finland, Serbia, Czech Republic, Norway and Hungary.</p>
<p>The meetings were comprised mainly of field events with small fields and depleted crowds. Nevertheless, for the athletes who took part and the fans who spectated, it was a small step closer back to the norm.</p>
<p>In Somero in Finland on Saturday (6), Krista Tervo smashed her own national record with a throw of 71.93m. She was under pressure in the early stages, sitting in second place after two rounds, just eight centimetres adrift of Suvi Koskinen&rsquo;s leading mark of 66.01m. In that same second round, Silja Kosonen added almost a metre to Tervo&rsquo;s national U20 record, throwing 65.60m.</p>
<p>Tervo, as she had done in the opening round, produced another foul with her third effort, but then sent her hammer out to 68.81m in round four to take the lead. Having found her groove, she unleashed her record-breaking throw in round five. The 22-year-old rounded out her series with 70.84m, the second-best throw of her career.</p>
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<p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CBF8Rm_nlZm/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Royal Hammerthrowers Finland (@rhtfinland)</a> on <time style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;" datetime="2020-06-06T11:59:51+00:00">Jun 6, 2020 at 4:59am PDT</time></p>
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<p>Kosonen made another improvement on the Finnish U20 record with 67.99m in round four, then followed it with 67.50m and 67.63m to prove it wasn&rsquo;t a fluke.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;d been talking with my coach about the possibility of throwing 72 metres this season, and now we have done it in my first competition,&rdquo; said a delighted Tervo, whose previous best was 70.18m. &ldquo;My main goal for the rest of 2020 is to throw 70 metres more consistently.&rdquo;</p>
<p>In the men&rsquo;s competition, Aaron Kangas took the lead in the third round with 74.34m, then set a PB of 75.30m before improving it again with 77.09m in round five. It&rsquo;s the best throw by a Finnish man for four years.</p>
<p>Over in Novi Sad, Serbia, world indoor champion Ivana Spanovic opened her season at a low-key competition organised by the local athletics club on Saturday (6).</p>
<p>The Olympic bronze medallist, who missed last year&rsquo;s World Championships through injury, jumped 6.80m in the fourth round, while European indoor bronze medallist Strahinja Jovancevic found 7.25m sufficient to win the men&rsquo;s competition.</p>
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<p style="margin: 8px 0 0 0; padding: 0 4px;"><a style="color: #000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CBGSf2TlDCv/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A decent 6.80m after 10 months 🤙🤪 #backatit #DreaMBIG #ideto #letsgo2020</a></p>
<p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">A post shared by <a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px;" href="https://www.instagram.com/ivanaspanovic/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Ivana &Scaron;panović</a> (@ivanaspanovic) on <time style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;" datetime="2020-06-06T15:14:05+00:00">Jun 6, 2020 at 8:14am PDT</time></p>
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<p>&ldquo;We are very happy with today&rsquo;s result and 6.80m is a very good performance for the opening of the season,&rdquo; coach Goran Obradovic told Serbian media. &ldquo;We consider this as &lsquo;controlled training&rsquo; as it was necessary to know in what shape Ivana is at this stage. This is a good sign and we look forward to being ready to jump seven metres once the Diamond League meetings start.&rdquo;</p>
<p>World bronze medallist Bence Halasz threw a world-leading 78.86m to win the men&rsquo;s hammer contest in Szombathely on Saturday (6). 2017 European U20 bronze medallist Daniel Raba was a few metres adrift, as was the case in their last clash a few weeks ago, but he was rewarded with a PB of 73.85m.</p>
<p>Hungary&rsquo;s 2013 world U18 champion Reka Gyuratz was a comfortably winner of the women&rsquo;s competition with 70.20m, her first 70-metre throw of the season.</p>
<p>Norway&rsquo;s world finalist Ola Stunes Isene produced the highlight in Bergen on Saturday (6), winning the men&rsquo;s discus with a season&rsquo;s best of 64.62m. Sven Martin Skagestad, his biggest domestic rival, was second with 61.22m.</p>
<p>European indoor 60m champion Jan Volko was the standout performer in Ostrava on Friday (5). The Slovakian sprinter won the rarely-contested outdoor 60m in 6.69 and made it a sprint double by winning the 150m in 15.33.</p>
<p><strong>Jon Mulkeen for World Athletics</strong></p>

It was a busy weekend – in relative terms, of course – across Europe with competitions taking place in Finland, Serbia, Czech Republic, Norway and Hungary.

Tervo’s Finnish hammer record highlights weekend action in Europe

Deanna Price’s hammer career almost ended before it even got going.

World champion Price ready to spread positivity with newfound platform

<p>Recently crowned world champions Pawel Fajdek of Poland and DeAnna Price of the USA topped the end-of-year standings for the <strong>2019&nbsp;IAAF Hammer Throw Challenge</strong>. 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The scoring system takes each athlete&rsquo;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.</p>
<h3>Final standings</h3>
<p><strong>Men</strong><br />1 Pawel Fajdek (POL) 241.86<br />2 Wojciech Nowicki (POL) 237.47<br />3 Bence Halasz (HUN) 234.99<br />4 Quentin Bigot (FRA) 232.04<br />5 Nick Miller (GBR) 231.58</p>
<p><strong>Women</strong><br />1 DeAnna Price (USA) 226.55<br />2 Wang Zheng (CHN) 226.34<br />3 Joanna Fiodorow (POL) 224.46<br />4 Anita Wlodarczyk (POL) 224.37<br />5 Gwen Berry (USA) 224.26</p>
<p>Complete standings: <a href="https://www.iaaf.org/Competitions/iaaf-hammer-throw-challenge/standings/2019/men" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Men</strong></span></a> | <a href="https://www.iaaf.org/Competitions/iaaf-hammer-throw-challenge/standings/2019/women" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Women</strong></span></a></p>
<p><strong>IAAF</strong></p>

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.

Fajdek and Price win 2019 IAAF Hammer Throw Challenge

<p>Pawel Fajdek of Poland may not be able to win Olympic medals in the hammer but he can&rsquo;t stop winning world titles.</p>
<p>The 30-year-old from Swiebodzice became the first man to collect four world golds in this discipline tonight with a best effort of 80.50m in the fourth round.</p>
<p>France&rsquo;s Quentin Bigot took silver with 78.19m ahead of Hungary&rsquo;s Bence Halasz, who had a best of 78.18m.</p>
<p>Fajdek, who began the season with injury problems, started as he meant to continue on day six at the IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019, establishing a first-round lead of 79.34m that would have been sufficient to win on its own.</p>
<p>Wojciech Nowicki, who beat his fellow Pole to the European title last summer, finished fourth overall with a best of 77.69m.</p>
<p>However, the Polish team then lodged a protest, claiming Halasz had touched the ground outside the circle on his first attempt. The jury of appeal concluded that irregularities in the conduct of the competition disadvantaged Nowicki and, in fairness to both athletes, decided to award bronze medals to both Nowicki and Halasz.</p>
<p>&ldquo;It was a very difficult season with a very good end,&rdquo; Fajdek said. &ldquo;I had to go from zero to 100 per cent in just one year, coming back from injury. I basically had only seven months for the preparation.</p>
<p>&ldquo;I had some back problem, knee problems, but that is our job to deal with it. It is normal. Now, taking the fourth world championship title &ndash; it is very emotional for me and I feel very proud tonight. Next &ndash; hard work in the following two years until the Eugene World Championships&hellip;&rdquo;</p>
<p>Bigot, meanwhile, was colourful on the subject of how it felt to make his breakthrough at a major championship: &ldquo;When you get your first medal, you want to get more of it &ndash; like a vampire wants more and more blood.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Fajdek&rsquo;s mighty feat has been consecutive. The first of his golds came in Moscow six years ago, as he beat Olympic champion Krisztian Pars of Hungary to gold with an effort of 81.97m. Fajdek, calamitously, had failed to record a mark in London.</p>
<p>Two years later in Beijng he retained his title with an effort of 80.88m, two metres clear of his nearest rival.</p>
<p>Cut to the following year&rsquo;s Rio Olympics, where the good news was that he recorded a mark in Olympic competition but the bad news was that it wasn&rsquo;t sufficient to get him into the final.</p>
<p>And skip to London in 2017, where he retained his world title with an effort of 79.81m ahead of authorised neutral athlete Valeriy Pronkin, who recorded 78.16m, and his fellow Pole Nowicki, who took bronze with 78.03m.</p>
<p>History was on Fajdek&rsquo;s side in Doha &ndash; and he embraced it.</p>
<p><strong>Mike Rowbottom for the IAAF</strong></p>

Pawel Fajdek of Poland may not be able to win Olympic medals in the hammer but he can’t stop winning world titles.