Australian heroes - Samuels Dani & Steven Hooker - Althletics at world championships

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Samuels Dani - Twenty-one-year-old Dani Samuels has become Australia's first gold medallist of the 12th IAAF world championships and the youngest world discus champion in history with a new personal best performance in Berlin.
Samuels recorded a best throw of 65.44m to claim Australia’s first ever female world title in the field, a massive 2.49m ahead of the career best 62.95m (Brisbane, 1/03/08) she took into the championships.
Sitting in 10th position after two rounds, Samuels needed to pull out a big throw with her third attempt to avoid elimination from the competition. Soaking up the pressure, she threw an impressive 62.71m to move into third place and secure herself another three throws.
Confidence growing, the 21-year-old let her fourth attempt fly, producing a personal best throw of 64.76m and moving up into second position.
Improving again with her fifth throw Samuels further extended her personal best with a massive throw of 65.44m to take the competition lead and held on throughout the final round to take out the gold medal.
In taking out the championship Samuels, a five-time national champion, became the youngest ever winner of the women's discus throw at a world titles, surpassing German Martina Opitz who claimed gold in 1983 at 22 years of age.
The result also launches the 2005 world youth and 2006 world junior champion to No. 3 on the Australian all-time list behind Daniela Costian (68.72m) and Lisa-Marie Vizaniari (65.86m).

Needless to add the WR at 76.80 m by Gabriele Reinsch of Germany set in 1988 was some distance away.

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Steven Hooker - Steve Hooker won a remarkable gold medal in the men's pole vault final at the world athletics championships in Berlin .
Hooker, who suffered a thigh injury less than a week before the championships began. The 27-year-old had a painkilling injection prior to the final after the injury had flared up during qualifying on Thursday when he cleared 5.65m with his only attempt.

Today he gambled by sitting out the early heights and only came in at 5.85 metres, which he failed to clear. Relying on his talent he opted to raise the bar and nailed 5.90m at his first attempt, which was enough to add the world title to the Olympic gold medal he won in Beijing last year.
Romain Mesnil of France took silver with 5.85m and his countryman Renaud Lavillenie won the bronze with 5.80m.

Steven Hooker had earlier cleared 6.06m in an indoor competition at Boston in February 2009. His best outdoors was 5.90m in 2009. He had cleared 6.00m outdoors in 2008.

The WR (outdoor) is 6.14m by Sergei Bubka of Ukraine.

Two gold medals and one bronze in long jump is a good performance for Australia.

Well done Aussies,

Manoj