29 March 2010

Paralympic Games bronze medallist Dan Greaves (Charnwood AC) threw a lifetime best and unofficial World Record of 56.50m (F44 discus) at the Wexiö Indoor Throwing meeting in Växjö, Sweden on Saturday (27 March).

Greaves, a former Paralympic, World and European champion, exceeded his previous best of 55.60m – which was also an unofficial record at the time – by almost a metre and was delighted with his performance: “It was a perfect competition for me,” he said. “I’ve just returned from a period of warm weather training in Portugal where I was working on my throwing technique. Normally I wouldn’t have had the chance to compete so soon on my return but this event was a great opportunity to put all of that training into practice in a fun and relaxed environment. I knew I was in good shape and this has been a confidence booster ahead of the BT Paralympic World Cup in May.”

The Wexiö event, which is not IPC sanctioned, is held in a huge indoor venue in Sweden. It took place for the first time in 2009 enabling throwers to compete in perfect conditions and to raise the overall profile of events such as discus, which is not normally contested indoors.

Leicester-based Greaves, who opened his series with two 55m+ throws in his opening three efforts, exceeded his previous world best on his second attempt before going on to better it in the penultimate round of the competition.

The overall event was won by Olympic champion Gerd Kanter with 66.95m. The Estonian, who set a world indoor best of 69.51m at the equivalent meet 12 months ago, proved an inspiration for Greaves and his fellow country man Brett Morse (Birchfield), the England Under-23 champion and Great Britain and Northern Ireland representative at the 2009 European Under-23 Championships (2009), who finished third with 60.14m.

“It was a real motivation competing again Gerd,” he said, “It think we’d all agree that having him there really picked us up and made us want to throw further and perform even better; certainly from my point of view it was inspiration to compete against the Olympic and former World champion.”

To watch Dan in action follow the link and click on his name: http://www.team75plus.com/20033