Thorkildsen changes his mind and will complete the season | 16.08.2012
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| Norwegian javelin star Andreas Thorkildsen will compete at the Diamond League meeting in Stockholm on Friday. |
After Stockholm, Thorkildsen will contest the Norwegian championships in his home town of Kristiansand as well as the exclusive Zurich meeting known popularly as the Olympics in one night.
On the last evening of athletics at the Olympics, sponsors of the Norwegian team have a get together with their medallists, but this time round there was no athletics medal for Norway.
Norwegian athletics federation president, Svein Arne Hansen, pointed out an odd statistic: “It is noticeable that when the Olympics are held in Europe that we don’t win a medal.”
The same thing happened in Barcelona 1992 when Norway failed to get onto the medals table and it has happened once again that the Games have been in Europe. In between they have picked up seven medals.
It is understood that after this latest set-back of finishing sixth in London Thorkildsen would take the rest of the season off, but after some thought he has decided to continue competing.
Åsmund Martinson, Thorkildsen’s coach, maintains that his man can throw further than ever in the future: “If we take on board the knowledge we have of injuries, recovery and treatment – and use our heads, I still think he can throw further than he has ever done.”
Martinson’s charge has enjoyed a long purple patch from the time he lifted gold in the Athens Games right up to the 2011 world championships in Daegu last year when he took silver.
In that golden period, Thorkildsen became the only javelin thrower to have pocketed world, European and Olympic titles at the same time. Not even the great Jan Zelezny managed that feat.
“Whether you call it injury or physical challenges, it depends on where you set the dividing line. But he has been battling things that mean he cannot throw as he normally does. And that means we cannot practise technique as we would wish. There were too few repetitions [in training] and that is connected to injury,” explained Martinson.
“Before I could throw 87m even though I was injured,” said Thorkildsen. “But now I have been struggling with lots of small things all of which means that I have not been able to throw consistently at a high level.”
In Stockholm, Thorkildsen will once again meet most of the Olympic finalists including the European champion and world lead, Vitezslav Vesely from the Czech Republic.
