July 21, 2022 - Croatia's best female athlete, Sandra Perković, won the silver medal in the discus throw at the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, USA, while Croatia's second representative, Marija Tolj, finished eighth.
Perković was second with a score of 68.45, which is her best throw this season. However, that was still not enough for the gold, surprisingly won by Chinese discus thrower Bin Feng with 69.12, reports HRT.
The bronze was won by the Olympic gold medalist from Tokyo, American Valarie Allman, with 68.30 meters. The defending champion from Doha, Cuban Yaime Perez, ended up seventh with 63.07, while Marija Tolj took eighth place, with 63.07.
It is Sandra's 12th medal at major competitions and the fifth at the world championships, which no other discus thrower in the world has achieved.
In her first world final in Berlin in 2009 as a teenager, she finished in ninth place, just before becoming the European junior champion. She then won gold twice, in Moscow in 2013 and London in 2017, and won two silvers (Beijing 2015, Eugene 2022) and one bronze (Doha 2019). Let's add that the 32-year-old Perković won two Olympic golds (2012, 2016) and has five European titles.
22-year-old Marija Tolj also achieved great success. In her first final at a major senior competition, she was eighth with a throw of 63.07 meters. Tolj recently won gold at the Mediterranean Games in Algeria with a personal record of 64.71 meters.
It started hot. In the first series, Allman threw 67.62 and Sandra 67.74, but Bin Feng shocked everyone with 69.12. With this result, Feng improved her personal record of 66.00 meters by more than three meters.
Perković came close to her in the second series by throwing 68.45, while Allman achieved a result of 68.30 in the third series.
It was expected that to win, Sandra would have to beat the American who came to Eugene with the best result of the season (71.46). She succeeded in this, but no one expected Feng to celebrate, who had achieved her greatest success so far in 2019 by winning the Asian Championships. At the last WC in Doha, she was fifth, and at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, she was only 17th.
Unfortunately, Sara Kolak did not make it to the javelin final. The norm was 62.50 meters, but the Olympic winner from Rio de Janeiro did not make a single correct attempt in the qualifications.
It was her third appearance at the world championships. In London in 2017, she was one step away from the podium by winning fourth place, while two years later, in Doha, she was seventh.
The Ludbreg native didn't even have a single correct attempt at the Olympic Games in Tokyo last year, and this season she threw the furthest 62.60 in Leiden, the Netherlands.
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