European Winter Throwing Challenge comes to a close

The European Winter Throwing Challenge at Marsa came to a close yesterday, bringing down the curtain on two days that saw some of Europe's leading athletes competing to win the medals on offer.

Day Two of the challenge took off with the women's javelin where the Russians ended with two athletes on the podium.

Valeria Zabruskova's throw of 63.84 metres won her the title ahead of Germany's Steffi Nerius. Veteran Russian Ekaterina Ivakina was third with a throw of 61.34 metres.

Dutchman Rutger Smith repeated last year's success in the men's shot with a throw of 20.23 metres that however did not improve on his previous winning throw of 20.52 which was also the championship record.

Slovenia's Milan Vodovnik (19.65m) was second while Grigoriy Panfilov, of Russia, finished third with a throw of 19.43 metres.

One athlete to generate a fair deal of attention was France's Stephanie Falzon who had the added bonus of drawing on the support of the locals given her Maltese origins.

The young French woman's throw of 63.05 metres was good enough to see her finish the hammer competition in a respectable sixth place.

The overall winner of this event was Germany's Andrea Bunjes with a throw of 67.99. Great Britain's Shirley Webb registered the surprise result of the day when she finished second with a throw of 67.52 metres, over four metres better than her previous best.

Webb had spent the previous week training in Malta, something that she claimed helped her a lot.

"It was definitely a good idea to come a week earlier as I had time to get acclimatised," she said.

Third place went to the young Finnish athlete Sini Poyry (67.49).

Russia won the women's team event with a total of 8,240 points. Germany (8,185) were second and Italy (7,908) third.