Menendez wins gold with world record

Maybe there was something in the air, but this was obviously a night for javelin throwing. How appropriate that at last, on the last night – the calmest evening of the entire championships – Finland should finally live up to its name as the land of the javelin.

Not only did Olympic champion Osleidys Menendez regain her world title by breaking her own world record – with a massive first round throw of 71.70 that effectively killed off the competition – but in the very next round Germany’s Christina Obergfoll set a new European record of 70.03, making her the second longest thrower of all time. It was five metres longer than she has ever thrown before.

This was already the best javelin competition ever. And it had only just begun.

Germany’s Steffi Nerius had laid down an early marker whipping her very first throw out to 65.96. In the end that turned out only to be good enough for bronze.

Finland’s Tarvainen got the crowd going by also exceeding 60 metres, throwing a season’s best of 62.64 for second place. But it was at the end of the round when the competition’s great moment came.

Menendez settled all questions of the Gold medal with her very first effort. Drawn to throw last of the 12 competitors, she took her customary short run-up and launched her spear out beyond the 70 metre mark – way beyond.

After a few moments wait the distance appeared on the in field board, 71.70. Game over. With another five rounds of the competition still to come the battle was already for the minor medals.

Only Britain’s Fatima Whitbread in 1987, with a completely different type of javelin, has ever thrown further to win the gold. Menendez ran to the trackside and grabbed a Cuban flag to wave for the eager photographers.

No one else in the world has ever thrown over 70 metres with the current model. No one was going to do it here. Were they?

Obergfoll’s unbelievable effort came in the very next round. Now it was her turn to jump in the air and put her hands over her mouth. She passed the next round, overcome with emotion at what she had achieved.

Minutes later Denmark’s Christina Scherwin improved her national record by more than half a metre to 62.32. Within just two rounds we’d already had a world record, an area record and a national record.

The only disappointment for the javelin-mad Finns was that at the half way stage their girl – Paula Tarvainen – had been pushed back to fourth place after initially lying second, and their old favourite, the 1995 bronze medallist Mikaela Ingberg, finished ninth and was eliminated.

Scherwin did it again in the fourth round – pushing her Danish record out by another metre to 63.43, good enough for fourth place. Nerius, who’d topped the qualifying competition and taken an early lead in the final was now hanging on to the bronze.

Obergfoll passed rounds four and five while Menendez had two more over 60, one of which was 65.53. But the positions were unchanged at the start of the final round.

Zahra Bani caught the habit in the sixth round, throwing the fifth personal best of the night, 62.75, to push Tarvainen down to sixth. The Finn had one final chance to get a medal but she’d need to throw longer than she ever had before. It didn’t happen.

Obergfoll had one last go but it was a half-hearted attempt. Menendez didn’t even bother.

It may not have been a good night for Finland; but it was a good night for javelin all right.

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.