Lithuania’s Mykolas Alekna improved his own discus world record by more than a metre with a sensational 75.56m* throw at the Oklahoma Throws Series World Invitational, a World Athletics Continental Tour Bronze meeting, in Ramona on Sunday (13).
Back at the meeting where he set his first world record of 74.35m last year, the Olympic silver medallist twice improved that mark – first setting a world record of 74.89m with his opening throw and then improving to 75.56m in the fourth round.
Australia’s Matt Denny, who threw 74.25m in Ramona on Thursday (10), also surpassed Alekna’s previous world record by launching the discus 74.78m.
In a competition of record depth, five athletes surpassed 70 metres and seven threw beyond 69 metres. USA’s Sam Mattis, who threw 70.08m to finish runner-up to Denny three days earlier, improved to 71.27m to finish third in Sunday’s contest and Germany’s Clemens Prufer threw 71.01m to finish fourth. Great Britain’s Lawrence Okoye finished fifth with 70.76m.
Alekna’s 74.35m in Ramona on 14 April last year had broken the longest standing men’s world record – that 74.08m having been achieved by Jurgen Schult in 1986, some 16 years before Alekna was born.
Now the 22-year-old has become the first athlete to surpass 75 metres.
The Alekna family has two of the top four men’s discus throwers in history, with two-time Olympic champion Virgilijus Alekna – the father of Mykolas – now placed fourth on the world all-time list with his 73.88m from 2000.
Mykolas Alekna’s latest world record came the day after Valarie Allman threw a North American record of 73.52m in Ramona for the farthest women’s discus throw in the world since 1989.
*Subject to the usual ratification procedure
Credit: World Athletics
