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When he’s not thinking about discus, Lithuanian athlete Mykolas Alekna, whose father is a two-time Olympic and world champion discus thrower, likes to go fishing.
Among his rapidly expanding pitching net, his recent catches stand out. This broke the longest standing men’s world record in track and field.
The 21-year-old ran a whopping 74.35 at the Oklahoma Slows Series World Invitational on Sunday, originally measured at 74.41 meters, which was later revised and is still subject to World Athletics’ normal approval process. He threw the meter and turned the discus world on its head. A mark that lasted for 38 years. The effort broke the previous record of 74.08 meters set in 1986 by two-time Olympic medalist Jurgen Schulte, who was representing East Germany at the time. Born in 2002, Mykolas’s closest name has also been pushed down to third place on the all-time list, his father Virgil Alekna.
So when Mikolas spoke in an interview with World Athletics last year about his ambition to one day be like his “legendary pitcher” father and “maybe even better than him,” he wasn’t kidding. Ta.
Although he was certainly absent from the season-opening, low-key pitching competition in Oklahoma State, the day before he had witnessed another extraordinary pitching performance (Cuba’s Yaime Perez in 1989). Since then, she has thrown the longest of any female athlete in the world with a throw of 73.09 meters). Mikolas produced an incredible series of six throws over 70 meters, with the youngster setting a personal best on his first throw and breaking the record on his fifth. Overall, he ranked high on the list of best pitchers. His first 72.21 meters moved him to 10th place. The third run was 72.89 meters, which placed him in 4th place. The fifth run made history with a distance of 74.35 meters.
Some of the longest standing world records in track and field – Marita Koch (women’s 400m, 1985), Jarmila Kratochbylova (women’s 800m, 1983), Yuri Sediyk (men’s hammer throw, 1986) — was established in the 1980s and is a drug-tainted record. Period in sports. The 1986 Schulte mark remained untouched for almost 40 years. Virgil, a three-time Olympic and four-time World Championship medalist who set a personal best of 73.88 meters in 2000, was close behind. In a competition where athletes often reach their best late in their careers, my son is the only 21-year-old to have surpassed it with flying colors.
Even though discipline was deeply ingrained in the Alekna family, Mikolas didn’t always want to talk about his father’s discus throwing. Mikolas’ older brother Martinas is also a top-level discus thrower. Mikolas was into soccer and high jump until he was 16 years old, so it took him some time to get used to throwing the discus. By the way, it turned out that the reason for his conversion was his legs.
“I’ve grown a lot and my feet have gotten bigger. I started getting slower, so I moved to discus,” Mikolas told World Athletics. “I think I was pretty slow. My parents just wanted me to play sports. It didn’t matter what kind of sport it was, just do something.”
He did things very quickly in a new sport. By the time he was 19, he was European and World Under-20 Champion (both in 2021). He then received a scholarship to California State University and was successful at the senior level. In 2022 he won a gold medal at the European Championships and a silver medal at the World Championships in Eugene.
His progress over the past few years has been consistent and incredibly fast. His season best jumped from 57.68 points in 2020, 63.52 points in 2021, and 69.81 points in 2022 to 71.00 points in 2023, when he won the bronze medal at the Budapest World Championships and also became the European U-23 champion. .
His father is still his “big idol” and spends his most relaxing vacations away from his profession fishing. “I think about the discus all the time,” he said. “But once you start fishing, you forget everything.”
If he continues to win glory at the Paris Olympics, the track and field world will undoubtedly welcome him quickly.
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