After a ninth-place finish at the Tokyo Olympics when she was considered to be one of the title favourites, Germany’s Christin Hussong returned to victorious form in the javelin at the Palio Citta della Quercia in Rovereto, a World Athletics Continental Tour Silver meeting, on Tuesday (31) evening.
Hussong produced the longest throw of the competition in the fifth round with 66.06m. However, that didn’t guarantee the victory for the European champion as the javelin was held in the context of the Diamond League ahead of next week’s finals in Zurich.
However, Hussong also won the winner-takes-all Final Three format with 58.14m ahead of Latvian Lina Muze (57.44m) and Nikola Ogrodnikova from the Czech Republic (55.27m).
The meeting also produced a home victory in one of the field events but not for the recently anointed Olympic champion Gianmarco Tamberi in the high jump.
In the men’s shot put, Zane Weir produced his fourth successive competition in excess of the 21 metre-line, reaching out to 21.32m to supplant former world U20 champion Jacko Gill from New Zealand who had taken the lead in the sixth round with 21.20m.
In the high jump, Tamberi thoroughly entertained the crowd who had come to see him compete on home soil for the first time since triumphing in Tokyo but the showman couldn’t quite recapture his form from a month ago today.
Tamberi finished second with a 2.25m clearance behind Shelby McEwen who cleared each height up until 2.28m on his first attempt. A game of cat-and-mouse ensued with Tamberi attempting 2.30m before McEwen took three attempts at the next height of 2.32m albeit to no avail.
"I'm exhausted, I can't wait to disconnect, but I owed it to this fantastic audience," said Tamberi.
In third, former world and European champion Bogdan Bondarenko from Ukraine cleared a season’s best of 2.22m.
On the track, Italian-based Romanian Catalin Tecuceanu took a surprise victory in the men’s 800m in 1:45.19 ahead of the British pair of Elliot Giles in 1:45.58 and Olympic 1500m finalist Jake Wightman in 1:46.00.
The meeting also featured two fast races over 3000m, both of which yielded European victories.
In the men’s race, Serbia’s Elzan Bibic clocked 7:39.45 for victory over Moroccan veteran Abdelaati Iguider in 7:41.75 and in the women’s race, neutral athlete Svetlana Aplachkina set a meeting record of 8:39.95 to defeat Germany’s Elena Burkard (8:40.46) and former world 5000m silver medallist Mercy Cherono from Kenya (8:40.76).
Her teammate Polina Miller won the 400m in 51.21 and Poland’s Klaudia Siciarz edged out Brit Cindy Sember in the 100m hurdles, 12.95 to 12.96.
Full results here.