Jamaican causes big surprise as he throws Olympic record of 70.00m at the Paris Games to beat the world record-holder
Rojé Stona produced one of the shocks of the Games to win discus gold on Wednesday (Aug 7) in Paris by three centimetres.
Not only did the unheralded Jamaican beat world record-holder Mykolas Alekna of Lithuania, plus a host of other well-known discus throwers, but he did it with an Olympic record of 70.00m.
Stona, 25, has had trials for the NFL with the Green Bay Packers and New Orleans Saints recently despite not having played the sport at college.
The NFL describes him as “possessing explosive hips and above-average core strength to pair with very long arms and huge hands” but he “looks uneasy running and catching in drills”.
Rojé Stona (Getty)
Perhaps Stona will stick to discus after this. He is now an Olympic champion and beat a top-class line-up in the process.
On Wednesday night in the Stade de France, though, Stona said he simply had a lot of thinking to do now about his sporting future.
Alekna set a world record earlier this summer of 74.35m amid favourably windy conditions in Oklahoma. Here in Paris he opened up with an Olympic record of 69.97m – beating his father Virgilijus’s mark – in the second round but he had no answer when Stona threw 70.00m in the fourth.
Mykolas Alekna (Getty)
After throwing the mark, Stona ran to the side of the track to embrace his coach, the Olympic shot champion Ryan Crouser.
Matt Denny of Australia was third with 69.31m and Kristjan Ceh of Slovenia fourth with 68.41m.
Daniel Stahl, the defending champion from Sweden, was seventh with 66.95m.
“It’s a very special night,” said Stona. “It’s everything I wanted, but for it to actually happen, it’s a very good feeling. In practice, leading up to the competition I felt great. So I believed in myself and I know that I had it in me.
“Just went and release it, no pressure, I was already in the top eight, so I had nothing to lose. My coach told me to not overthink it.”
“I’m very happy as it was an amazing final,” said Alekna. “I was pleased to break the Olympic record, even if it didn’t last very long.”
Denny said: “This is definitely a nice step forward for me. I knew Mykolas would throw a big mark and he did early. We had a good time out there. It was a fun competition.”
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