Cuba v Germany in Javelin final
Olympic champion and world record holder Osleidys Menendez made light work of qualifying for the women’s Javelin final on an afternoon blessed with bright sunshine and relatively gentle winds.
The Cuban is known for throwing long on her first attempt and with the competition barely five minutes old she effortlessly whipped the javelin out to 65.77, more than five metres beyond the automatic qualifying distance. It was sure confirmation, if any were needed, that she is the woman to beat in Sunday’s final.
Menendez obviously feels at home in the land of the javelin – it was on the warm-up track here in July that she threw 68.47, the longest throw in the world this year and the seventh longest ever with the new specification javelin.
Two women look capable of challenging her, however – fellow Cuban, Sonia Bisset, who also needed only one throw of 64.50 to go through; and Germany’s Olympic silver medallist Steffi Nerius, who continued her run of good form with another personal best, 66.52, the longest of the qualifying competition.
You could tell conditions in the Olympic stadium had at last taken a turn for the better when the opening throw of the entire competition flew over the orange tape marking 60.50. Unfortunately, that effort, by Germany’s new hope Christina Obergfoll, was a foul.
Obergfoll, the fourth longest thrower in the world this year, later threw 61.59, exactly three metres short of the pb she set on 21 May, setting up a Cuba versus Germany contest in the final.
The Commonwealth champion Eve Laverne, competing in her eighth world championships, also needed three attempts to before qualify. She did so automatically with her best of the year, 61.12.
By contrast, defending champion Mirela Manjani was way off mark. The Greek, who has been off form all season, failed to go through after fouling three times, the third landing outside the left hand edge of the sector.
Apart from the top three, the only other thrower to qualify with her first effort was Britain’s Goldie Sayers, who’s is partly coached by Finland’s Mikaela Ingberg, a world bronze medallist ten years ago.
Like Sayers, Ingberg, wearing her trademark head gear (a head band this year rather than a scarf), was throwing in group A – surely one of the few occasions when a coach and their athlete have appeared together in the same qualifying competition. Ingberg attracted the biggest cheers of the morning with her third throw, which sailed out to 61.06, her longest this year.
The final should be a rousing, flag waving affair as Ingberg’s compatriot Paula Tarvainen also qualified with a third round throw of 60.83, the sixth longest of the competition. She needed all the support she could get today. Lying in 13th place before her final throw – the very last of the competition – she sent the spear out on a wave of noise to grab the last place in the final.
The Finns can be sure of huge support, of course – a home-made banner fluttering at the end of the stadium proclaimed ‘Finland: the javelin country’ – but both Ingberg and Tarvainen had shoulder surgery after last year’s Olympics and before today they hadn’t figured among the top throwers this year.
Tarvainen’s last gasp effort pushed one notable name out of Sunday’s final – the Czech Republic’s Barbara Spotakova, the sixth longest thrower in the world this year. Spotakova thought she’d saved herself with a third round throw of 58.74, nearly four metres below what she is capable of, but was pushed back to 13th by the Finn.