The Women's Hammer Throw

Hammer throw

The modern or Olympic hammer throw is an athletic throwing event where the object is to throw a heavy metal ball attached to a wire and handle. The name "hammer throw" is derived from older competitions where an actual sledge hammer was thrown...

 event at the 2007 World Championships in Athletics

2007 World Championships in Athletics

The 11th World Championships in Athletics, under the auspices of the International Association of Athletics Federations , were held at Nagai Stadium in Osaka, Japan from 24 August to 2 September 2007...

 took place on August 28, 2007 (qualification) and August 30, 2007 (final) at the Nagai Stadium

Nagai Stadium

is an athletic stadium in Osaka, Japan. It is the home ground of J. League club Cerezo Osaka. The stadium has a seating capacity of 50,000.-History:...

 in Osaka

Osaka

is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. The qualification standard was set at 71.00 metres.

The greatest women's hammer throw competition in the history of the IAAF World Championships was crowned with Germany's Betty Heidler

Betty Heidler

Betty Heidler is a German hammer thrower, a world record holder. She is living in Frankfurt now and member of the Eintracht Frankfurt athletes team...

's second-round throw of 74.76 metres to take the gold medal. The result was in doubt until the final round, with Cuba’s Yipsi Moreno

Yipsi Moreno

Yipsi Moreno González is a Cuban hammer thrower. She is a double world champion and Olympic silver medalist, a former world junior record holder and current area record holder...

 and PR China’s Zhang Wenxiu

Zhang Wenxiu

Zhang Wenxiu is a Chinese hammer thrower.She won the 2005 Asian Championships and 2006 Asian Games. She finished tenth at the 2001 World Championships, seventh at the 2004 Olympics, fifth at the 2005 World Championships and fourth at the 2006 World Cup...

 vying to dislodge the German. Silver was claimed in the end by the Cuban Olympic silver medallist and former World champion, while Zhang took China’s first ever hammer medal at World or Olympic level.

Though the championship record of 75.20 metres survived, other records tumbled. In all, there were nine women over 70 metres, a feat never before achieved in the World Championships. All three medalists went over 74 metres, which was another unique statistic, and for the first time there was incredulity as Russia was absent from the medals; Russian reigning champion Yelena Konevtseva

Yelena Konevtseva

Yelena Nikolayevna Konevtseva is a female hammer thrower from Russia. Her personal best is 76.21 metres, achieved in May 2007 in Sochi.She finished tenth at the 2000 World Junior Championships and fifth at the 2007 World Championships...

 managing no higher than the fifth spot.

All night long the 70 metres tape was to be breached no fewer than 25 times and Moreno set the tone with a first-round 72.84 metres. The 2000 Olympic champion Kamila Skolimowska

Kamila Skolimowska

Kamila Skolimowska was a Polish hammer thrower. She was known for her gold medal in the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics, which made her the youngest Olympic hammer champion, as well as for her two medals from the European Championships. Her personal best throw, and Polish record, was 76.83 metres,...

 from Poland replied with 73.75 metres to move into the lead. Heidler started inauspiciously, but there was a confident start from Ireland’s Eileen O'Keefe, moving into fourth place with a distance of 70.93 metres. Konevtseva started with 72.45 metres, but it was to be the furthest she was to throw all evening.

No change at the top in the fifth round, but Zhang continued her battle with Moreno and slipped back into silver with 74.39 metres. But in the final round the Cuban was to come back with a huge effort that won her the silver and came agonisingly close to Heidler’s lead, falling short by just 2 centimetres. That was the narrowest margin of defeat in the history of this event at the World Championships.

Medalists

Gold
Silver
Bronze

Schedule

• All times are Japan Standard Time
  Japan Standard Time
  Japan Standard Time or JST is the standard timezone of Japan, and is 9 hours ahead of UTC. For example, when it is midnight in UTC, it is 09:00 in Japan Standard Time. There is no daylight saving time, though its introduction has been debated several times. Japan Standard Time is the same as...
  
   (UTC+9
  UTC+9
  UTC+09:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +09. This time is used in:-As standard time :*East Timor*Indonesia **Moluccas**Papua and West Papua *Japan - Japan Standard Time*North Korea...
  
  )

  Qualification Round
  Group A	Group B
  28.08.2007 – 10:00h	28.08.2007 – 11:35h
  Final Round
  30.08.2007 – 19:30h

Abbreviations

• All results shown are in metres

  Q	automatic qualification
  q	qualification by rank
  DNS	did not start
  NM	no mark
  WR	world record
  AR	area record
  NR	national record
  PB	personal best
  SB	season best

Records

Standing records prior to the 2007 World Athletics Championships
World Record World records in athletics World records in the sport of athletics are ratified by the International Association of Athletics Federations. Athletics records comprise the best performances in the sports of track and field, road running and racewalking....		77.80 m	August 15, 2006	Tallinn, Estonia
Event Record		75.20 m	August 24, 1999	Seville, Spain
Season Best 2007 Hammer Throw Year Ranking This page lists the World Best Year Performance in the year 2007 in both the men's and the women's hammer throw. The main event during this season were the 2007 World Athletics Championships in Osaka, Japan, where the final of the men's competition was held on August 27, 2007...		77.30 m	April 22, 2007	Bogatyr Adler Adlersky City District Adlersky City District is the southernmost of four city districts of the city of Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia, lying along the Black Sea coast near the southern Russian border with Abkhazia, Georgia... , Russia Russia Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

Group A

Rank	Overall	Athlete	Attempts			Distance	Note
			1	2	3
1	1		74.69	—	—	74.69 m	Q
2	3		X	72.27	—	72.27 m	Q
3	8		69.02	69.77	69.40	69.77 m	q
4	10		69.14	68.39	X	69.14 m	q
5	11		65.91	X	68.65	68.65 m	q
6	13		X	67.13	68.15	68.15 m
7	14		68.09	67.01	64.30	68.09 m
8	18		66.88	X	X	66.88 m
9	19		X	61.79	66.84	66.84 m
10	23		65.65	65.22	X	65.65 m
11	25		65.64	X	X	65.64 m
12	30		63.32	X	60.93	63.32 m
13	31		X	62.83	62.62	62.83 m
14	32		61.55	62.68	59.43	62.68 m
15	33		X	X	62.40	62.40 m
16	34		X	56.28	61.81	61.81 m
17	36		57.22	59.45	58.61	59.45 m
18	38		X	X	55.72	55.72 m
—	—		X	X	X	NM
—	—		X	X	X	NM

Group B

Rank	Overall	Athlete	Attempts			Distance	Note
			1	2	3
1	2		72.87	—	—	72.87 m	Q / SB
2	4		X	71.31	—	71.31 m	Q
3	5		71.07	—	—	71.07 m	Q
4	6		70.29	70.65	—	70.65 m	q
5	7		66.57	69.57	70.18	70.18 m	q
6	9		X	X	69.53	69.53 m	q
7	12		65.64	66.80	68.55	68.55 m	q
8	15		63.44	67.90	66.36	67.90 m
9	16		67.87	65.89	X	67.87 m
10	17		66.37	66.82	67.19	67.19 m
11	20		X	66.67	66.51	66.67 m
12	21		66.57	63.22	65.71	66.57 m
13	22		66.56	X	65.09	66.56 m
14	24		X	63.16	65.65	65.65 m
15	26		61.74	64.24	64.63	64.63 m
16	27		64.18	60.09	62.10	64.18 m
17	28		X	X	64.00	64.00 m
18	29		61.27	63.64	62.58	63.64 m
19	35		58.43	61.77	61.56	61.77 m
20	37		X	59.09	X	59.09 m

Final

Rank	Athlete	Attempts						Distance	Note
		1	2	3	4	5	6
		X	74.76	X	73.73	71.31	73.10	74.76 m
		72.84	X	X	74.33	70.87	74.74	74.74 m
		X	73.11	X	74.21	74.39	X	74.39 m
4		73.75	70.54	65.69	70.78	70.06	70.77	73.75 m
5		72.45	70.11	X	X	70.35	68.90	72.45 m
6		70.93	64.27	69.06	66.90	69.21	69.38	70.93 m
7		X	70.25	70.73	67.56	70.74	X	70.74 m
8		69.77	70.36	67.42	69.16	66.41	69.92	70.36 m
9		65.84	70.20	67.65				70.20 m
10		67.79	X	69.08				69.08 m
11		68.16	X	X				68.16 m
12		67.30	X	67.56				67.56 m