News16 Mar 2009


Kanter in a class on his own, 69.70m; Pars hammers 80.38m in Los Realejos

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Gerd Kanter of Estonia competing at the European Cup Winter Throwing event in Los Realejos, Spain (© Moisés Pérez)

Los Realejos, SpainThe European Cup Winter Throwing event finished yesterday (15) with the fireworks provided by Estonia’s reigning Olympic champion Gerd Kanter, who managed an unchallenged win in the men’s Discus Throw with a fine 69.70m performance.

Kanter opened with a promising 68.39 throw, then made a foul to continue at 67.24 in the third attempt; the big heave came in the following round when the reigning World champion and European silver medallist reached 69.70, a new world leading performance.

His subsequent efforts of 66.96 and 67.72 just showed the kind of form he enjoys at this early stage of the season. Kanter’s performance was worthy of  a 1233 points according to the Hungarian, the highest scoring throughout the weekend.

Runner-up place in this ‘A Group’ went to Spain’s Frank Casañas with a 64.70 fourth round toss but the Cuban-born Olympic fifth placed was also bettered by Germany’s Marcus Münch’s final round of 64.90 in the ‘B Group’. Watch out in the near future for this 22-year-old whose previous PB remained at ‘only’ 60.61 until today.

Kanter arrived in Los Realejos two weeks in advance of the competition to build up properly to the competition. 

The 29-year-old Estonian giant confessed that “I usually travel to Africa at this stage of the year but the Canary Islands climate likes me a lot and the big difference is that Spain is much closer for me and so I don’t have to lose some valuable training sessions due to the jeg-lag.

Schult’s World record of 74.08m on the agenda

Having already accomplished the job of securing World and Olympic golds, the 1.96 tall Tallin-native also explained that: “at 73.38m I’m only 70cms short off the World record and I’ll try to get it mine next May in Salinas (USA) where I have already competed the previous two years” (72.02/2007) and 71.88 (2008).

Pars over 80m

Hungary’s current Olympic silver medallist Krisztian Pars took revenge from Italy’s Marco Lingua in the men’s Hammer Throw as the latter had defeated Pars last year in Split.

Lingua dominated until round 2 with a 79.66m best try but the 30-year-old Italian didn’t go any further while Pars managed 80.38 in round 3 to take firstly the lead and finally the overall win.

Spain’s Javier Cienfuegos gave the home crowd something to cheer about as the still 18-year-old was a convincing winner in the ‘B Group’ to break up to three times his National Junior record and set a new figure of 73.18 which put him in the medal picture for this summer’s European Juniors in Novi Sad.

Abakumova and Ostapchuk take the spoils in the women’s side

Russia’s reigning Olympic silver medallist Mariya Abakumova had a poor start in the women’s Javelin throw as the 23-year-old kicked off the contest with a couple of fouls plus an unremarkable 46.64 effort but she bounced back in round four to take the lead thanks to a 61.87 release, quite far from the 70.78 performance worthy of the Beijing silver but long enough to hold off the challenge of Estonia’s Moonika Aava who was measured at 60.76 in round five with no other woman reaching the 60m mark.

Nadzeya Ostapchuk of Belarus faced the women’s Shot Put contest as the prohibitive favourite and she finally succeeded but the reigning Olympic bronze medallist – and 2005 World champion – only led the competition from the round five as Romania’s Anca Heltne’s second round of 18.76 had ruled the contest until then; the 28-year-old Belarusian managed 18.79 and 18.80 in her closing attemps to secure win.

In the team standing, Germany took the men’s category with a 4337 points closely followed by home squad Spain (4297) while Russia came third thanks to a 4209 scoring.

As for the women’s Romania succeeded with 4223 points while Italy (4216) and Germany (4203) occupied the minor places on the podium.

Emeterio Valiente for the IAAF

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