Harting beats Alekna at European Athletics Permit Meeting in Kaunas – European Athletics (EAA) – NEWS

As expected there were fireworks at the men's Discus, the highlight of European Athletics Permit Meeting Kaunas on Sunday but it was not the expected victory by Virgilijus Alekna.  

The thousands of Lithuanian fanatical spectators, who turned up expecting to see yet another victory for their giant, were not able to celebrate a win, who despite a top class excellent 68.18m effort had to give way to German Robert Harting.

The German World Championship medallist from Osaka, who is improving year on year, had to set a new personal best to defeat the double Olympic Champion Alekna with a third round best of 68.65m. It is yet another boost to the German team ahead of the SPAR European Cup in Annecy in under 2 weeks time.

In a very strong competition, Hungarian Gabor Mate of Hungary took third place with 66.32m ahead of his Hungarian team mate Zoltan Kovago (65.57) and Piotr Malachowski of Poland was fifth with 65.52m.  

On the track, Russian Ivan Nesterov was an impressive performer, setting a new Meeting Record of 1:47.69 to take the 800m and there was a Ukranian sprint double with Dmytro Hluschenko winning the 100m in 10.30 (-0.9) and his compatriot Sergiy Demidyuk ran 13.58 (-0.5) to win the110 m Hurdles ahead of American Jeff Porter (13.68).  

In the jumps, Russian Pavel Fomenko and Canadian Michael Mason cleared 2.27m in the men's High Jump and Estonian Tonis Sahk was best in Long Jump with a 7.84m.

On the womens's side, there were no fewer than five meeting records set in what is growing into one of the finest Permit Meetings on the calendar.

Led by the impressive Lithuanians Lina Grinickaite, who won the 100m in 11.37 and Elge Balcunaite who took the prized scalp of Russian Natalya Tsyganova to win the 800m in 2:01.23 the large home crowd went home with other things to cheer about.

There were a further two Meeting Records for Polish athletes as Kamila Stepaniuk wrote new figures in the High Jump with a 1.91m clearance and Ursula Piwnicka rewrote the Javelin figures with a 60.27m effort.  

Finally, there was a shock result in the women's 400m as French athlete Phana Anarchasis beat Olympic medallist Natalya Antyukh from Russia in 51.92.

 European Athletics (EAA)