Yipsi Moreno competing in Stuttgart (© Getty Images)
It wasn’t so long ago that 70m was considered the height of women’s Hammer throwing but this young event has progressed so quickly that 74m has now become quite common place.
Twelve women have so far surpassed 74m in 2008, and surprisingly the least of those is current World champion Betty Heidler of Germany (74.11). While consistent in the 71 / 72m range this season, the 24-year-old from Frankfurt is not at the top of her game as she was so clearly throughout the 2007 season when she was over 75m twice as well as regularly hammering out marks above 73m. Her national record best is the 76.55 from 2007.
Further up the list of 74m performers this year we find Yipsi Moreno of Cuba in fourth position with 76.16m, a release which took the win in Ostrava in June. The 27-year-old is the most consistent of all major championship competitors. Twice World champion (2001 and 2003) and silver medallist in the last two editions (2003 and 2005), Moreno is the Olympic silver medallist from 2004. That her Ostrava result was only just short of her Area record (76.36 – 2007) is a clear indication that the Cuban is a potent medal threat.
Two of the three women who head Moreno on the world season list are from Belarussia, the world season leader Aksana Miankova and Darya Pchelnik, their respective 77.32 and 76.33m blasts occurring in the same competition in Minsk on 29 June. Miankova’s mark was a new national record and made her the third longest thrower of all-time, the two women in front of her, both Russian, are currently involved in doping controversy.
Miankova, 26, however, has not had a very solid major championship record, failing to pass beyond the qualification round at either world or continental championship level. Pchelnik, also 26, is the World Student games champion, but otherwise has an equally unimpressive CV at major level. She has improved by over five metres this season! Their compatriot, 32-year-old Volha Tsander, sixth in Athens 2004, while also over 74m this year is perhaps not the force she once used to be.
Behind Heilder and Moreno at last year’s World Championship in Osaka was China’s Wenxiu Zhang. The Asian record holder has a best this year of 73.52m, and while her continental mark of 74.86m (2006) doesn’t rate as high as some of her opponents, it would be a great surprise if we were to see results above the 74m line in Beijing, as distances have tended to lessen rather than increase on each season’s norm in recent years when athletes have competed at major championship level.
Zhang notably was the winner of the test event in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest (70.56) on 24 May. The Asian Games champion was seventh in the 2004 Olympics, and as well as her bronze last year finished fifth in the 2005 World championships, and so clearly has all the credentials to medal on home soil.
Martina Danišová-Hrasnová of Slovakia is at 25-year-old, one of the youngest of the top flight and is the second furthest thrower of this year, thanks to her 76.82m release in Reims on 6 July. That performance marks her out as the sixth best thrower of all-time. A former World Junior silver medallist the Slovak might just be the surprise package of Beijing despite not making it past the qualification round in Osaka last summer.
Fourth at those World championships was the 2000 Olympic champion Kamila Skolimowska of Poland who as a best of 73.50 this year. The Pole is still only 25-years-old and we tend to forget she has been around at the very top for a long time with World Youth gold in 1999 before her giant leap forward to the Olympic crown the following year.
Another of the younger brigade to keep an eye on is the former double World junior winner Ivana Brkljacic of Croatia, who has thrown 74.89m this year, which is not far off her national record territory (75.08m – 2007). Eleventh in Osaka, expect a rapid rise up the results table in Beijing.
Not to be over looked is the French pair of Manuela Montebrun, 8th in Osaka, and Stéphanie Falzon who surprised her in Albi by taking the national title; Russia’s Yelena Konevtseva, Ireland’s Eileen O'Keeffe and Clarissa Claretti, who were in the three places ahead of Montebrun in the 2007 World Championships final, will also be in the mix.
Chris Turner for the IAAF
