No other record made by a male athlete in all of sport has held as long. With four titles across the five days, Finland were the leading European nation in Nairobi and their quartet of titles takes their overall tally of gold medals from the World U20 Championships up from eight to 12.Įlsewhere on the last day of the championships, neutral athlete Natalya Spiridinova cleared a lifetime best of 1.91m to win the high jump title and the Polish 4x100m quartet further improved their European U20 record to 38.90 to win bronze in a race won by South Africa in a world U20 record of 38.51. Is a record that has stood for more than 35 years unbeatable Maybe. There was also a fourth gold medal of the championships for Finland as Heidi Salminen won the women’s 400m hurdles in a lifetime best of 56.94 ahead of France’s Ludivine Aubert in 57.16. With Edlund disqualified, the title was passed from Sweden to Turkey with Berke Akcam adding the world U20 title to his European U20 title in a lifetime best of 49.38 ahead of neutral athlete Denis Novoseltsev in 49.62. Her teammate Gabriel Wallmark also won the men’s triple jump final with a national U20 record of 16.43m and there was initially another gold medal for Sweden in the 400m hurdles before Oskar Edlund incurred the wrath of the judges for a trail leg infringement. While Alekna won his second major title of the season, Sweden’s Maja Askag brought her tally up to four gold medals after repeating the horizontal jump double which she achieved last month at the European U20 Championships in Tallinn.Īfter winning the long jump title in Tallinn with a wind-aided 6.80m, Askag won this title in Nairobi with a wind-legal lifetime best of 6.60m to win by one centimetre from India’s Shaili Singh.Īskag, who also jumped 13.75m to win the triple jump final on Friday, became only the second athlete in championship history to win both titles after Russia’s Yelena Lysak all the way back in 1994.

Four of his five valid throws - 69.81m, 68.52m, 67.67m, 67.10m - would have sufficed for the title ahead of Jamaica’s Ralford Mullings’ who set a lifetime best of 66.68m to win silver. This mark was not only a championship record but it also represented the second longest throw in history with the U20 1.75kg implement, bettered only by Ukraine’s Mykyta Nesterenko whose world U20 record of 70.13m has stood since 2008.Īfter a prodigious opener, Alekna couldn’t improve on that first round throw but he amassed a gleaming series. one week later when they announced that Plucknett had tested positive for the banned anabolic steroid nortestosterone.Lithuania’s Mykolas Alekna won his second major title of the season in the discus on the last day of competition at the World Athletics U20 Championships in Nairobi, Kenya on Sunday (22) and he approached the world U20 record in the process.Īlekna won the European U20 title in Tallinn last month with 68.00m but in the rarefied conditions in Nairobi, the 18-year-old improved to an unassailable 69.81m with his first throw of the final. On 7 July 1981 Ben Plucknett of the United States won a meet in Stockholm with a world record throw of 72.34 m (237 ft 4 in), but the record was nullified by the I.A.A.F.

Another 14 are acknowledged but are unofficial, since they were set before the founding of IAAF. The first world record in the men's discus was recognised by the International Association of Athletics Federations in 1912, and was set by James Duncan in 1912 (47.58 m).Īs of 2011, 42 world records have been ratified by the IAAF in the event.

The Czech inscription translates as: 'At this spot on August 2, 1964, Ludvík Daněk set world record in discus throw marking 64.55 m.' Memorial circle at the Ludvík Daněk Town Stadium in Turnov, Czech Republic.

World record discus throw