Andreas Thorkildsen

Norwegian javelin thrower Andreas Thorkildsen has confirmed that he plans to go for a hat-trick of European Athletics Championships titles next year in Helsinki, following his wins in 2006 and 2010.

The European Athletics Championships will be held every two years starting in 2012.

“It’s going to be the first time when we are going to do the Euros and Olympics in the same year,” said the 29-year-old who celebrated his birthday on 1 April, speaking by telephone from his winter training base in San Diego.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a big problem for anyone because, if they (European Athletics) schedule it right you should be able to go through two peaks in your season. Hopefully it’s going to work out great but it’s definitely going to be a new challenge.”

“I approach every year the same. We have the Europeans when the US athletes don’t have a big (international) championship and for me the Europeans is a big deal.

“I have the same intensity in my preparations and make the most out of every year as you never know what can happen in sports, how many years you can get out of it, my plan is to prepare well: whether it’s Olympic year, Worlds year or Europeans year, I still try to perform my best and at the highest level,” he added.

Thorkildsen will have his first meeting of this year in less than four week’s time, at the Samsung Diamond League meeting in Doha on 6 May.

Even though the javelin was not part of the meeting last year, Thorkildsen has fond memories of the event as he won in Qatar for four consecutive years between 2006 and 2009. The initial year in that streak was also when he threw over 90 metres for the very first time.

“Doha is a great starting meet because when you go there you know it’s going to be like 30-something degrees so you know that the risk of getting injured early is minimised.

“It’s a great place to be and once in a while you can catch a really good wind, if you look back to 2006 when I did a 90-metre throw for the first time. It’s a decent size stadium so if gets windy, and there are good conditions, you can get some really long throws.”

“Doha is one of the meets every year where you can get good temperatures, and often good tailwinds, so it’s potentially one of the meets where you can see some of the best throws of the year. Hopefully, I’ll be ready to show my best and it would be great to come out and do a stadium record in the first meet.

Despite winning everything that there is: he has two Olympic Games gold medals, two European titles and won at the 2009 World Championships after silver medals in the previous two championships, Thorkildsen knows that the one thing that might elude him in his already illustrious career in beating Jan Zelezny’s world and European record of 98.48m.

“I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to do world record. A lot of things have got to work out the right way and that’s one of the fun things about this sport, one year you can catch everything and everything goes the right way, but I don’t know how far my body is able to throw.

“I don’t really stress too much about the world record because right now I’m quite far behind it (Thorkildsen’s personal best is 91.59m set in Oslo in 2006) but, for me, if I can get close to 93.09m (by Finland’s Aki Parvianen), which is the second best ever, that would be a more natural goal for me, that might be my limit right now. However, the world record for the javelin is one of the most superior world records there is so if I never get that then I won’t cry about it, I’ll have had a good career.”

Even if the world record is possibly beyond his reach, Thorkildsen is convinced that he can go into new territory this summer and improve on his personal best, which has been on the books for five years.

“Every year, I strive to throw further than the previous year so and I think most years I’ve been physically ready for better distances. But sometimes, with those distances, everything has to match up, you’ve got to have good conditions, you’ve got to have great shape, everything’s got to align. You’ve just got to be prepared and I think I have been prepared for the last couple of years; it’s just unfortunate (that everything has not come together). I’ll give you an example; in 2008, my Olympic record (of 90.57m) in Beijing would probably have been a lot further if I had thrown it somewhere else. It’s all by chance sometimes when the distances are that great.

“The reason I’m in San Diego is that they’ve got great facilities, it’s the same weather all your round which you can’t really say about Southern European. I bought a house here in December and I’ve been out here most of the time since then so I’ve got a lot more throwing done, it looks like my consistency is up and I’ve been doing a lot more throwing off the runway. Hopefully that’ll lead to some great results.”

Thorkildsen acknowledges that while he has been the man to beat for the last three years, he may have a new set of rivals this summer, perhaps including the man who beat his world junior record recently, Latvia’s Zigismunds Sirmais.

“I just wish he’d done it in a month or two then my record would have been 10 years old. He kinda screwed me on that one. I saw the throw on YouTube, and he looks pretty good; of course, a world junior record, 84 metres, that young is really good,” joked Thorkildsen.

However, he acknowledges that most of his main rivals should come from the senior ranks. In particular he is looking over his shoulder at Germany’s 2010 European Athletics Championship silver medallist Matthias De Zordo, who inflicted defeat on Thorkildsen in front of his home fans at the SPAR European Team Championships in Bergen last summer.

“He (De Zordo) showed to be a great thrower last year and I’m really looking forward to finding out what he’s capable of this year. He’s training in San Diego right now so I’ll have a chance to have a little bit of what he’s capable of; I know he’s got a great coach in Boris Henry. I’m really looking forward to competing against him.

“De Zordo and Petr (Czech Republic’s Petr Frydrych) will be interesting to watch this year. Last year they had a bit of inconsistency in their throwing, which is normal for guys their age. It’ll be interested to see how much more consistent they get this year and of course, I also expect (Finland’s Tero) Pitkämaki and all the other older guys to be on a good level too,” analysed Thorkildsen.

source:european-athletics.org