The result of the Men's Hammer Throw final went down to the wire this evening, with Belarussian Ivan TIKHON claiming the title ahead of a fast finishing Adrian ANNUS (HUN).

Ranked number two in the world this year, Tikhon outclassed his opponents, setting up an unassailable lead with his second attempt. Under no pressure, and with the gold medal already secured, Tikhon let loose with a huge final throw of 83.05m to miss the Championship Record by just 33cm.

Whilst the gold medal always looked safe, it was an intriguing contest for the minor medals. The silver looked to be going to Japan's record holder, Koji MUROFUSHI after he threw 80.12m on his fifth attempt, but it was a big final effort by former world number one Annus, to register 80.36m, relegating Murofushi to the bronze medal position.

The fourth round was somewhat controversial, with the Electronic Distance Measurement equipment appearing to fail when it registered an 82.55m throw to Alexandros PAPADIMITIROU (GRE), seemingly putting him into the lead, when the hammer clearly fell short of the 80m mark. Papadimitriou was asked to re-throw at the end of the round.

Both Andriy SKVARUK (UKR) and Slovenia's first Olympic hammer thrower, Primoz KOZMUS, threw 79.68m and finished the competition fourth and fifth repectively on countback.

Leading qualifier and Barcelona silver medallist, Igor ASTAPKOVICH (BLR) failed to make the cut after three rounds by fouling each attempt.

The qualifying rounds of the men's Hammer Throw brought few suprises this morning as the pre-event favourites advanced easily to Monday's final. 

Eight throwers reached the qualifying distance of 78.00m, with Olympic bronze medallist Igor Astapkovich (BLR) producing the best effort of the day, 79.66m.

Astapkovich's teammate and Edmonton silver medallist Ivan Tikhon (BLR) threw conservatively at 79.64m, five metres below this season's best.  Pre-event favourite and this year's top hammer thrower, Koji Murofushi (JPN) did just enough to automatically qualify on his second throw with 79.45m.

Also throwing above 78.00m was four-time Slovenian champion Primoz Kozmus, plus Ukraine's Andriy Skvaruk, Ilya Konovalov (RUS), Vadim Devyatovskiy (BLR)and Hungarian's former European champion Adrian Annus.

Crowd favourite Nicolas Figere (FRA) narrowly made the top 12 with his first throw of 76.79m, whilst teammate Christohe Epalle, despite rallying crowd support, failed to put a dent in the leaders' confidence, unlike a few stray hammers which dented the home straight of the track.

The only real suprise of the round was the elimination of Slovakia's Libor Charfreitag, missing out on the final by just 4cm to Australia's seven-time national champion, Stuart Rendell.