Gold for Laanmae at Universiade Gwangju 2015 (81.71m)

The distribution of medals is continuing at the 2015 Universiade in Gwangju. Today only javelin events took place. It started with the women’s qualification rounds and ended with the men’s final. Tanel Laanmae won the competiton with 81.71m which is only 1 meter short of his personal best.

Same as yesterday’s Olympic Champion Keshorn Walcott, Tanel Laanmae produced his best attempt during round one and seemd to have shocked his competitors. Tanel could not improve after this big opener, same as Keshorn couldn’t yesteday. Zigismunds Sirmais, who has the biggest personal best opened in round one wit 79.37m which was enough for the second place after round one. Shih–Feng Huang threw 75.03m to take the third place.

During round 2, Shih–Feng Huang cmae very close with his best attempt of 81.27m to secure his second place. Hubert Chmielak from Poland improved also in round two with his attempt of 78.96m which pushed him 4 places higher from 8 to the 4th after the second round ended. No one improved during the rounds 3-5, except for Chao–Tsun 79.35m and Vedran Samac 78.96m. But these improvements were not enough to get in place for a medal.

In the end Tanel Laanmae won the competition with 81.37m, followed by Shih-Feng Huang 81.27m and Zigismunds Sirmais 79.37m (SB).

For the women’s javelin final the automatic qualification performance required was 59m. None of the throwers were able to come even close to that. Xiawei Du from China was the best with 57.64m, followed by Tatsiana Khaladovich 57.54m and Lina Muze 55.87m. In order to qualify for the final 51.75m were enough.