Primoz Kozmus of Slovenia competes in the men's Hammer Throw final (© Getty Images)
The men's Hammer Throw final only truly came alive with the very last throw of the competition, and while it was no surprise that Primoz Kozmus won, the real talking point was the failure of pre-event favourite Kristian Pars.
After a forgettable first round, the competition picked up in round two when Olympic champion Kozmus sent one flying out to 79.74m. But Poland's Szymon Ziolkowski - the man who won Olympic gold eight years before Kozmus - then unleashed a season's best of 79.30m to move into the silver medal position.
Pars, who came into Berlin with an 18-meet winning streak, made things very difficult for himself from the outset. After opening with a below-par 75.51m, the Hungarian followed it up with two fouls. At one point it even looked as though he would even miss out on making the top-eight cut.
Eventually he scraped through and improved in round four to 77.45m, moving into the bronze medal position. But a foul followed, leaving Pars with just one attempt in which to improve. And to pile on extra pressure, Kozmus improved to 80.15m at the end of the penultimate round.
But the final round brought simply more bad fortune for Pars. Russia's Aleksey Zagornyi - who previously had a reputation for a string of disappointments at major championships - improved to 78.09m, pushing Pars out of the medals altogether. Pars could not respond and ended up a bitterly disappointed fourth, with his second-lowest throw of the year.
Kozmus, meanwhile, stepped into the ring for his final throw against a backdrop of cheers from his 50-strong fan club in the nearby stand. The cheers grew louder as his hammer went higher and further, eventually landing at a season's best of 80.84m, saving the final from having the lowest winning mark in IAAF World Championship history.
The overall standard was still relatively disappointing as Zagornyi's 78.09m was the lowest medal-winning distance in World Championship history, and only eight men bettered 76 metres.
German fans were pleased to see two men in the top six, however. Sergey Litvinov and Markus Esser threw 76.58m and 76.27m respectively, while Croatia's Andras Haklits was seventh (76.26m) and Belarussian Pavel Kryvitski was eighth (76.00m).
Jon Mulkeen for the IAAF
