Reigning European discus champion Kristjan Ceh from Slovenia will open his 2025 season at the European Throwing Cup which takes place in Nicosia, Cyprus on 15-16 March.
Both days of the European Throwing Cup will be streamed live on the European Athletics YouTube channel and will be accompanied by expert English-language commentary.
After missing last year’s event in Leiria, Ceh will be looking to recapture the title he won in 2022 (66.11m) and 2023 (68.30m).
Hot weather - 31C on Saturday and 34C on Sunday - is forecast across the weekend, a stark contrast to the conditions in Leiria last year when Romania’s Alin Alexandru Firfirica threw an impressive 66.07m in torrential and unrelenting rain to take victory in a competition which was delayed due to the inclement conditions.
Firfirica will return to defend his title against a strong field which features not only Ceh but also Tokyo 2020 Olympic silver medallist Simon Pettersson from Sweden and Lithuania’s Martynas Alekna - the older brother of world record-holder Mykolas - who improved his lifetime best to 67.23m last year.
Halasz and Kokhan to renew their hammer rivalry
Hungary’s Bence Halasz and Ukraine’s Mykhaylo Kokhan will meet for the 30th time this weekend with the head-to-head slightly in the former’s favour at 16-13.
They met for the first time at the 2019 European Throwing Cup in Samorin when an 18-year-old Kokhan had the beating of Halasz - whom Kokhan has cited as one of his idols in his formative years - in the U23 division of the hammer.
Attired in a full tracksuit due to the conditions, Kokhan won again last year - he won one of Ukraine’s two gold medals which helped them to top the medal table - although Halasz did have the beating of the Ukrainian at both the European Athletics Championships and Olympic Games, winning silver in both major events with Kokhan taking bronze on both occasions.
However, France’s Yann Chaussinand has the potential to be a possible interloper. He holds the world lead with 81.56m which is in excess of Halasz and Kokhan’s respective lifetime bests at 80.92m and 81.14m respectively.
With last year’s winner Artur Felfner from Ukraine not competing, Romania’s Alexandru Novac and Ioannis Kiriazis will be looking to upgrade on their silver and bronze medals from last year in the javelin.
But it will also be interesting to follow the progress of European U23 record-holder Max Dehning from Germany who threw 90.20m at the start of 2024 to break Steve Backley’s long-standing mark. However, the rest of his season was scuppered by a foot injury which required surgery in the off-season.
Two-time champion Zane Weir has opted to miss this event in order to focus on the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing the following weekend but Nick Ponzio could keep the shot put title in Italian hands.
Ponzio has ownership of both the furthest season’s best (20.67m) and lifetime best (21.83m). He will face five other throws with season’s bests in excess of 20 metres including Ukraine’s Artem Levchenko, who finished one place behind Ponzio in seventh in the final of last weekend’s European Athletics Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn.
Kesidis leads home hopes in the U23 hammer
Iosif Kesidis has been the face of the 2025 European Throwing Cup and rightly so.
Kesidis won gold for Cyprus at the World Athletics U20 Championships in Lima last year - his country’s first ever gold medal in championship history - by over seven metres and was then shortlisted for the men’s Rising Star award at the Golden Tracks award ceremony.
At 19 - and one of the youngest competitors in the U23 hammer - Kesidis isn’t expected to enjoy quite the same dominance when he swaps the U20 6kg hammer with the 7.26kg senior hammer this weekend but the home favourite could still give the crowd something to cheer for when he steps into the throwing circle.
Kesidis leads the entries based on season’s bests with 71.32m but the best performer based on lifetime bests is Greece’s Ioannis Korakidis - Kesidis’ predecessor as world U20 champion in 2022 - with 75.08m. Also watch out for reigning European U20 hammer champion Max Lampinen from Finland.
In other U23 events, world U20 shot put champion Jarno van Daalen from the Netherlands - the younger brother of Alida - has entered both the shot put and discus. The latter discipline also features Germany’s Steven Richter and European U18 and U20 champion Mykhailo Brudin from Ukraine who won gold and silver respectively last year.
The runner-up last year, Türkiye’s Muhammed Hanifi Zengin will be looking to take U23 javelin gold in Nicosia. The 20-year-old has improved to 79.56m in the early months of 2025.
Steven Mills for European Athletics