Thursday, May 20, 2021
Mega performance in Ostrava too
Vetter throws further than the rest of the world
A shape couldn’t be much better, now Johannes Vetter just has to take it with him to the Olympics. The German javelin thrower has so far dominated the year 2021 and is once again showing its extra class. A German athlete also makes women sit up and take notice.
The German javelin record holder Johannes Vetter made a big exclamation mark about two months before the Olympic Games in Tokyo (July 23 to August 8) with the seventh best distance in history. At the meeting in Ostrava, Czech Republic, the 28-year-old set a world best of the year with 94.20 meters. Vetter only threw another two times in his career, thus consolidating his position as the second best javelin thrower in athletics history.
In the weeks before, the 2017 world champion had cracked the magic 90-meter mark in both of his previous competitions – and thus confirmed the impression of the previous season. Vetter had made people sit up and take notice when he improved his own German record by three meters with 97.76 meters. Born in Dresden, he was only 72 centimeters short of the world record set by the Czech Jan Zelezny in 1996.
In Ostrava, cousin Anderson referred Peters (Grenada / 83.39) and Keshorn Walcott (Trinidad & Tobago / 82.75) to their places. His first attempt was the longest. In the end, two of his throws flew over the 90 meters, three further 88-meter attempts made for an overall extremely strong series. On Friday, Vetter will measure himself against the competition again in Dessau.
The women’s javelin decision also went to Germany: Christin Hussong won with the season best of 66.56 meters ahead of Czech Nikola Ogrodnikova (65.13) and Olympic champion Sara Kolak from Croatia (60.04). World record holder Barbora Spotakova (Czech Republic) came in fourth with 59.49 meters. Due to an exemption, 1500 spectators are allowed to attend the 60th Golden Spike meeting despite the corona pandemic.
Triple jumper Max Hess, however, missed the win. The 2016 European champion had to admit defeat, with a good 16.97 meters, to the strong Hugues Fabrice Zango (17.20 / Burkina Faso), who was trained by the former 18-meter jumper Teddy Tamgho. Olympic champion Christian Taylor from the USA had to be content with fifth place and 16.35 meters.
Armand Duplantis won the pole vault once again. The 21-year-old world record holder prevailed with 5.90 meters, behind the Swede, the reigning world champion Sam Kendricks (USA / 5.85) made it into second place.
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