Janus Robberts, the 25-year-old South African shot-putter, provided one of the top performances at the 11th Josef Odlozil Memorial athletics meeting in Prague on Monday with an excellent winning distance of 21,24m.
While the exciting shot-put event was attracting special attention from the appreciative crowd, Llewellyn Herbert, the South African record holder in the 400m hurdles, easily won his speciality with a time of 49,18 seconds.
Robberts took the initiative in the third round when he secured victory with his winning distance. In the fourth round he once again bettered the 21m mark with a put of 21,11m, which also bettered his 2004 best of 21,05m with which he won in Warsaw two weeks ago. Robberts has now recorded four victories during the past 14 days in Europe. He also recorded wins in Lille and Bratislava.
Joachim Olsen of Denmark tried his utmost to catch his old rival from their student days in the United States but could do no better than his 2004 best of 20,86m.
Although Robberts improved his best of the year he still finds himself in fifth place on the world best-performance list behind four Americans. He also missed the meeting record by a mere 2cm.
Robberts was very happy after the meeting and told his manager, Peet van Zyl, that he was looking forward to the rest of the season and particularly the Olympic Games in Athens. He has another meeting in Padua, Italy, next Sunday.
Herbert also continued his winning streak by defeating the local hero, Jiri Muzik, by just more than half a second.
Herbert said after his race that it was an ideal outing before Friday night’s Golden League meeting in Rome, where he will be up against the best.
”I just wanted to have at least one race before entering the major events,” he said. — Sapa