Harting increased head to head over Malachowski

The battle between Piotr Malachowski and Robert Harting is once again something special. At the European Athletics Team Championships Harting increased his head to head to 48:17. Robert Harting won the competition with 67,42m, followed by Piotr Malachowski 65,35m and Viktor Butenko 62,81m.

Throughout the entire competition no one came close to Olympic, World and European Champion Robert Harting. The German was once again the one who took the first place in a major competition. The European Athletics Team Competition was  a great test for the upcoming 2014 European Championships in Zurich, Switzerland later this year.

Harting opened the competition with 66,72m which was already enough to win the competition. Piotr Malchowski the eternal rival of Harting opened with poor throw of 63,75m. But even this throw would have been enough to take the second spot on the podium. The field was not the best there is but still the battle between Malachowski and Harting was on.

The Russian youngstar Viktor Butenko threw 61,95m in the first round to secure his third place. During the second attempt the Dutch thrower Erik Cadee overtook Butenko with a throw of 62,42m. It seemed that the fight for the third place was more interesting than the one for the first place. Until the last attempt of Vikor Butenko, Cadee was still in the third position. The Russian increasd his best attempt by a few centimeters and pushed Cadee to the fourth place.

The two main throwers Piotr Malachowski and Robert Harting were still fighting for the first place, but mainly in the shadow due to the poor performance of Malachowski. During the third round Malachowski improved to 65,35m but as one can see in the final results this was still more than 2m short of Harting’s winning throw of 67,42m. Also with the third and fourth round throws of 65,82m and 65,52m Harting would have beaten Malachowski.

Piotr Malachowski:

Despite the second place, I am very satisfied with this competition. It was the first time I did not feel blocked like I was in the previous meetings. Also, my technique is getting better. Of course, Harting was great and with all the home support he deserved to win. It is a big honour for me to get 11 points for the Polish team because I feel like an old mentor here with all these young athletes. It is a clash of generations at this championship and sometimes we feel a bit old with Tomasz Majewski {smile}.

The results: