Day 5, World Championships

This is the first image of Day 5 at the World Championships. Each day they handed out daily programs, you can obviously see whats on the cover of this one. As I would find out later, it was a BIG deal that Steffi Nerius won that gold medal, all over Germany.

The Women's Discus qualifying rounds were that morning. Here is a video of the USA's Becky Breisch:

Here is the USA's Stephanie Brown-Trafton, the Olympic champion from Beijing. The automatic qualifier for the finals was 61.50m/201'-9", and this throw was just behind the line at 61.23m/200'-10"! She just barely made it to the finals with this one!

The decathalon also got underway this morning. Here is the USA's Ashton Eaton, this year's NCAA champion, getting a personal best in the long jump:

Woo! 7.85m or a 25'-9" long jump for Ashton Eaton.

The men's high jump qualification rounds also started this morning, here's a jumper going over the bar:

Back to Group B of the women's discus qualifying. Here's Aretha Thurmond of the USA. This wasn't her best throw, but in the later rounds she would qualify for the final.

Here is Germany's 3-time World Champion Franka Dietzsch, who said she was going to retire after the 2004 Olympics. She did so poorly there that she decided she'd keep competing, and won the 2005 and 2007 world champs. Things did not go so well for her here.

As you can see, she threw it into the cage on this one.
Here she is picking the disc up. Unfortunately, her other throws wouldn't be good enough to advance her to the final.

Meanwhile, Terrence Trammell was one of the Americans to advance beyond the first heats of the men's 110 Hurdles:

Song Aimin of China and Irina Yatchenko of Belarus, both former Olympic medallists, competed in the women's disc as well. Aimin would advance, Yatchenko would not.

The competition was run very smoothly at the stadium. As soon as the women's discus qualifying was over, the cage came down and they began setting up the shot put circles for the decathalon competition...

...and the disci (the plural of "discus") were wheeled off the field!

Since there were a ton of empty seats over in the end of the stadium where the decath shot put was, I went over there to get a better view of the two shot circles they had going on at once. On the way I got myself a beer and a Boulette...
Apparently, its a fried meatball. I'm not sure what makes it a meatball since it's clearly in patty form, but I don't really care, because it was, of course, delicious. Very moist, and I guess you'd say greasy, and it didn't taste like a meatball we'd have with pasta in America. Still very good though.

Here are some pictures from the decath shot put. America's Jake Arnold:

World record holder Roman Sebrle of the Czech Republic:

A picture of the two shot put circles with two competitions going on at once:

And just some cool pictures of the shot still in the air right after the thrower released it:

In between the morning and evening sessions I went to and from my hotel once again, and at the train station I took pictures of these newspapers:
Remember how I said it was a big deal Steffi Nerius had won the javelin? Here's your proof. There wasn't a little sidebar blurb about it on page 3A of the sports section, it was FRONT PAGE news on these and a few other newspapers I saw. I'm willing to bet my degree that would NEVER happen if any American won a gold medal at a World Champs that were held in America.

Evening Session

Things started off with some medal ceremonies, including the ceremony for the men's 400m hurdles, where Bershawn Jackson and Kerron Clement won bronze and gold for the USA, respectively.

Then the competitors came out for the Men's Discus final.

Jarred Rome takes a warm-up.

Virjilius Alekna stretching. He's about 6'7", 285 lbs, and as strong and powerful as they come, yet as you can see, still pretty flexible. There's no point in being that big and powerful if you can't hit the right positions...and believe me, he certainly does!

Here is Piotr Malachowski of Poland taking his first throw at 68.77m/225'-7". It would lead the whole competition through four rounds.

Jarred Rome taking his first throw:

Robert Harting of Germany takes his first throw at 68.25m/223'-11", putting him second behind Malachowski.

Here's Casey Malone, the other American taking his first throw. My camera died right after he released the disc. He would end up finishing 5th.

So as I said, Malachowski would lead with his first throw through four rounds. In the 5th round, Malachowski improved again with a massive personal best to 69.15m/226'-10". Harting couldn't answer. So in the 6th round, Harting was the second to last thrower of the competition. With the German crowd cheering and hollering like no crowd I've heard before, Harting unleashed a MASSIVE lifetime best throw of 69.43m/227'-9" to take the lead back from Malachowski (its been nearly a month, yet I'm getting goosebumps as I write about it now.) Malachowski couldn't answer with his last throw, and Robert Harting won the second gold medal of the Championships for Germany! It was one of the coolest things I've seen in my life, and a great competition. Gerd Kanter, last year's Olympic champion and the favorite coming in, finished 3rd.

My camera came back to life for a few seconds to capture a little bit of the celebration after Harting's win. The video is pretty blurry but what happened was Harting ran onto the track, and lifted Berlino (the bear/mascot of the championships) onto his shoulders.

On the way out of the stadium, a large group of German fans marched out, waving German flags and chanting "RO-BERT HAR-TING", and they did that from the stadium all the way to the train station. Not for a soccer player, but for a thrower. Pretty freaking cool.