Olympia Speer
19-year-old German amazes with a fabulous throw
Status: 26.02.2024 | Reading time: 2 minutes
Throw into the history books: Max Dehning exceeded all expectations
Quelle: picture alliance/BEAUTIFUL SPORTS/KJPeters
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He himself hadn’t expected this: javelin thrower Max Dehning pulverized his own personal best by more than ten meters. He would have won World Cup gold in 2023. According to DLV, he is the youngest athlete to ever achieve this distance.
A young German javelin thrower astonished the competition with a surprise coup in the Olympic year: Suddenly the focus is on 19-year-old Max Dehning. The media in the country of the Indian Olympic champion and world champion Neeraj Chopra also expressed their admiration for the fabulous throw of 90.20 meters and looked ahead to Paris.
“The German teenager’s extraordinary performance is a clear message to India’s golden boy and reigning Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra, who sees it as his first serious competitor,” it says, for example. “India Today” states: “Javelin has a new star” and raves about the young German’s “extraordinary talent”. And Dehning himself? He has to understand his performance first.
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He achieved the sensational throw on Sunday at the German Championships in Halle/Saale. The Leverkusen player threw 90.20 meters in his first attempt and achieved something historic: According to the German Athletics Association (DLV), he is the youngest javelin thrower to ever exceed the magical 90-meter mark. He also improved Britain’s Steve Backley’s European U23 record (89.58 m) from 1990.
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And: With this performance, Dehning would have won the world championship title in 2023. The Leverkusen player is also only the sixth German ever to break this sound barrier. Johannes Vetter, Thomas Röhler, Raymond Hecht, Andreas Hofmann and Boris Obergföll have succeeded in this so far.
Olympic standard achieved for Paris
The omens for Dehning before this competition were anything but optimal. “I was sick last week and couldn’t train properly,” he said later. “I really wanted to take part in the competition here, but the fact that it turned out so far surprised me too. At first I thought the 90 was just after the decimal point. I have to process this first.”
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He improved his personal best by more than ten meters. He confirmed that the sensational throw was not a slip-up with 85.45 meters in the second round. He then finished the competition.
With his width, Dehning met both the Olympic standard for the summer games in Paris and the standard for the European Championships in June in Rome. “It seems,” writes India Today, “that Neeraj Chopra has a new rival to worry about at the Olympics.”
