As with all the throwing events and the horizontal jumping events, the competitors in the Shot Put have four attempts at this year’s World Athletics Final, just as they had in the first two years of this meeting.
Undefeated all summer, World champion Nadezhda Ostapchuk of Belarus set a World Athletics Final record of 20.44m in the last round, which on paper makes this look like another unopposed victory for the 24-year-old but view the details of the full series of efforts in this event and you’ll get another picture altogether.
It looked like Ostapchuk (21.09 PB this year) had sealed the win with her first put of 19.55 but in the next round New Zealand’s 20-year-old Valerie Adams-Vili matched that effort exactly, which, with the Belarussian fouling her second and then third effort, gave her first place in the competition by virtue of a better second best effort.
Vili’s whole series was solid - 19.24, 19.55, 19.31 - and it looks certain that in the not too distant future she will fulfill Ostapchuk’s prediction, made in Helsinki at the World Championships last month, that the New Zealander will be the dominant player in this event in future years.
But in the end it was not to be Vili’s night, as showing the competitive edge that marks her out as a World champion, Ostapchuk blasted out 20.44m in the fourth and final round.
Vili fouled her last attempt to end up in second (19.55), and Natallia Khoroneko (BLR) was third (18.80)
CT
