Chris Turner
7 February 2000Tampere, Finland -Tonight in Tampere Finland, at the annual Star’s Indoor Games, Mika Halvari the 1995 World Indoor shot champion, in the first round of the competition threw a staggering year 2000 world leading mark of 22.09 metres, to win the shot competition and become the fourth longest thrower on the world all-time indoor list.
Halvari, who has been suffering from Achilles problems ever since the early part of the 1996 season, fouled his other competitive efforts. He had indicated he was back to full fitness even before competition began, putting a couple of 20m plus efforts during his warm up.
Halvari’s gigantic 22.09 metre mark is a new Finnish indoor record, surpassing his own 20.83m record set in the same arena back in 1995. It is also longer than the current national outdoor record held by Reijo Stahlberg (21.69 metres) which has been standing since 1979.
Yet the shot competition in Tampere this evening was not just a one man affair! Fellow compatriot Arsi Harju, 1998 European Indoor bronze medallist, was also in fine condition and produced two solid 20 metre throws for second place (20.24m 2nd Round & 20.38m3rd Round). Completing a high class podium, another Finn, Timo Aaltonen also crossed the 20m line with 20.09m.
The centre of the Tampere indoor hall also witnessed a fine national indoor high jump record of 2.30 metres this evening set by 24 year old Oskari Frosen.
On the track, Leonard Myles-Mills (USA) took the 60 metres in 6.65 seconds. In the women’s 60m, Bahaman Debbie Furguson won in 7.27 seconds with World 200 metres champion Inger Miller (USA) back in third with 7.34 sec.
