Another Visit to Hungary

Now it is my turn to visit Szombathely. After reading about and watching video from visit to Hungary by Harold, Boldi, and Nate, I eagerly await training with the Dobó Se athletic club. However, this will not be my first sojourn to the "mecca of hammer throwing." I was able to visit Szombathely three weeks ago and watch the World Athletics Final (WAF) hammer competition held in their magnificent cage. While the rest of the competition was held in Monaco, the athletics stadium in Monaco is not fit to host the hammer throw. For the second consecutive year, the IAAF decided to host the hammer throw portion of the meet at their IAAF Performance Center in Szombathely.

While the crowd was not always into the competition, the throwers produced a great meet with Olga Kuzenkova backing up her Olympic gold medal performance by winning. Olli-Pekka Karjalainen was able to overcome a poor performance in Athens to throw one of his best marks ever and beat the favorite Ivan Tikhon and hometown thrower Krisztián Pars. The whole experience was great. It was interesting to visit a land, in which only a few individuals spoke English, but thankfully many spoke German and I was able to express myself.

More impressive than the WAF competition was the small club competition held the day before. While watching an eight year old finish a two-turn throw with relatively good technique, I could not help but think that this is how to train a champion. When an athlete starts throwing at age fourteen or fifteen, he is considered to have started late. It is unheard of to start throwing at eighteen, the age that the typical American hammer thrower first picks up the event.

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G. Martin Bingisser
Webmaster, Hammerthrow.org