All four of the women’s senior winners of the 2023 European Throwing Cup – Portugal’s Jessica Inchude, Germany’s Shanice Craft, Italy’s Sara Fantini and Greece’s Elina Tzengko – will be returning to Leiria this weekend to defend their titles.
Both days of the European Throwing Cup will be streamed live through the European Athletics YouTube channel and there will be extensive coverage across the European Athletics social media channels as well as the European Athletics website.
Perhaps, like in the men’s events, the pick of the contest is the javelin in which the 2022 European champion Tzengko, whose victory as a teenager in Munich helped earn her the 2022 European Athletics Rising Star of the Year award, will face six women who have better lifetime bests than her.
Among them is Cup record holder Maria Andrejcyzk, from Poland, who threw a massive 71.20m at the 2021 edition in Split.
The Tokyo Olympic Games silver medallist has been limited to just four competitions in 2022 and 2023 but she has been posting on social media about how she is fit again and has recently been warm weather training in southern Portugal.
Tzengko’s predecessor as European champion, Germany’s 2018 winner Christin Hussong is also in the field and looking to recapture her form after a difficult 2023.
Sigrid Borge is also in the field and the Norwegian was second on the 2023 lists with her early season 66.50m although her performances tailed off as last summer progressed.
Schilder looking for consistancy
Shot putter Inchude knows Leiria very will having been a frequent competitor there and she set her personal best of 18.67m there in 2022.
This year she has improved her indoor best to 18.65m in Lisbon little more than three weeks ago although she was a little down on that mark when finishing 10th at last weekend’s World Athletics Indoor Championships.
Five places ahead of her in Glasgow was the Netherlands’ European 2022 champion Jessica Schilder who leads the world lists with her national record of 20.31m, set at the recent Dutch indoor championships.
Since her superlative performance in Apeldoorn – the venue for next year’s European Athletics Indoor Championships – the 2022 European champion hasn’t quite been able to reach that distance, but her last two outings have seen her go well over 19 metres despite some issues with technical consistency.
With a career best more than a metre better than anyone else as well as the evidence presented by her last three competitions, Schilder will certainly start as favourite.
In addition to Inchude and Schilder, four other women in Leiria putted more than 18 metres indoors in recent weeks: Portugal’s Elana Bandeira and Great Britain’s Amelia Campbell, who finished 12th and 13th respectively in Glasgow, Spain’s Maria Belen Toimil and Germany’s 2017 European U20 champion Julia Ritter, the latter just missing out on world indoor selection after finishing third in the German championships despite setting an indoor best of 18.41m.
Craft-ing a third Cup victory?
Craft, who won the European U20 discus title back in 2011 and who has gone on to win three European bronze medals in the senior ranks as well as the Cup for the first time in 2019, has already been in fine form this year.
She won at the German winter throwing championships two weeks ago with a very promising 63.47m.
She will once again come up against France’s evergreen 44-year-old Melina Robert-Michon, third in the Cup 12 months ago, and both throwers have an identical personal best of 66.73m.
The 2016 Olympic Games silver medallist memorably competed in the very first European Throwing Cup in 2001 and had the first of her three Cup wins in Leiria a decade ago in 2014.
However, both women will have to beat Croatia’s Marija Tolj who leads the world so far this year with the 64.23m effort the 2019 European U23 champion produced to win her national winter throwing championships last month. Just 48cm shy of her lifetime best.
This year’s competition brings together the top four from Leiria last year with Portuguese record holder and 2021 Liliana Ca and Denmark’s Lisa Brix Pedersen, second and fourth in 2023, coming back to do battle again.
In field of excellent depth, there is also the Italian record holder and 2022 Cup winner Daisy Osakue, who has been training in Australia until recently and throwing over 60 metres there.
Kosonen looking to make her mark
All four 2023 winners will have strong competition which they will have to overcome if they are to retain her titles, none more so than Osakue’s compatriot Sara Fantini in the hammer.
Fantini, the 2022 European bronze medallist, finished fourth and sixth at the last two World Athletics Championships but one place and four centimetres in front of her in Budapest was Finland’s rapidly improving reigning European U23 champion Silja Kosonen.
Fantini has already had a couple of low-level outings this year while Kosonen has yet to make her competitive debut in 2024 but has escaped the harsh Finnish winter and been warm weather training in the Spanish Canary island of Tenerife during the last month.
It will be fascinating to see what each will bring to Leiria and one should definitely not overlook Romania’s 2022 European champion Bianca Ghelber who was second behind Fantini in the Cup last year but who has already thrown a world-leading 73.28m to win her national winter throwing championships in Bucharest last month and who has also been training in Leiria in recent weeks.
In what will be a repeat of the 2023 competition, all 14 competitors from last year’s senior A hammer competition are on final entry list.
Phil Minshull for European Athletics