Andreas Thorkildsen of Norway competes in the Men's Javelin (© Getty Images)
Double Olympic Javelin champion, Norway's Andreas Thorkildsen left no chance to the mighty Finns on their home soil in Seinäjoki on Saturday (6).
Thorkildsen threw 88.97m in the opening round of the Keihään juhlaa" international invitational competition, and produced another substantial effort (88.86) in the third round. Thorkildsen’s best mark goes into the second place on the world season list after Latvia's Vadims Vasilevskis 90.71m.
Thorkildsen set the four longest throws of the day. Teemu Wirkkala was the best Finn, setting his personal best of 84.68. Wirkkala, 5th at the Beijing Olympic Games last year, threw this in the second round and then stopped, because he felt pain in his side.
It was a good day of depth for Finland. Reigning World champion Tero Pitkämäki opened his season with a 82.90 in the first round and placed third, while Ari Mannio, who made a huge personal best improvement a week ago (85.70m), let fly a 82.78 effort now.
Thorkildsen was surprised with his excellent series of 88.97, x , 88.68, x, 84.86, 85.26.
“I had a kind of weird feeling, but still it flew ok. If I could made my legs move a bit better a 90m threw would have been possible in these conditions," said Thorkildsen.
Saturday was a cool day in Seinäjoki with a temperature of 8 - 9 degrees, but the tail wind was almost perfect.
Wirkkala said that his decision to pass rounds 3 - 6 was not a sign of a new injury.
"My muscles were a little too tight, and I didn’t want to make any risks in such a cold weather", Wirkkala confirmed. "My personal best wasn’t even close to a perfect throw. I can improve some metres if I just could run faster," he said.
Thorkildsen agreed with Wirkkala: "Teemu knows how to find power from his body and as soon as he gets some small technical things fixed, he’s the one to make really big throws."
Pitkämäki was calm although his season opening was not very promising: “I’ll have a throwing training on Tuesday, and if it goes well, I believe that 85m will be possible for me in Berlin next Sunday (14). I’ll go on step by step now," was Pitkämäki´s comment.
Wirkkala had beaten Pitkämäki in 2003 for the last time, the same year that Thorkildsen had taken his last victory in Finland before yesterday.
The women’s competition in Seinäjoki was won by a 18-year-old Carita Hinkka, who set her pb 54.37m.
Antti-Pekka Sonninen for the IAAF