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During the early 1990s, Jan Zelezny's dominance of the javelin event had
been continually challenged by his perennial rival Steve Backley (Great
Britain). However, in 1995, a new challenger emerged in the form of
Raymond Hecht (Germany) who had produced the season's longest throw, and
moved to second on the all-time world list behind Zelezny. However,
Hecht discovered just how much it would need to dislodge Zelezny from
his pedestal at Jena on 25 May 1996. Hecht threw 90.06m on his second
throw, but found himself over two metres behind Zelezny's second round
effort of 92.88m. It was the first time that two men had thrown over 90
metres in the one competition.
However, even this comparative
closeness was short lived, as Zelezny's very next throw travelled a
whopping 98.48m, bettering his own world record of 95.66m set in 1993 by
nearly three metres. Only six days later at Ostrava, Zelezny produced a
throw of 94.64m, which was the fourth longest performance in history,
and a distance that only he had ever bettered. During the next eight
days Jan bettered 90 metres on two more occasions during a visit to
South Africa. In all, Zelezny surpassed 90 metres at six separate meets
up to 22 June, but could not reproduce these distances later in the
season.
This gave his rivals some hope at the Olympic Games in Atlanta
where Zelezny was chasing his second consecutive gold medal. Although
he had been hampered by injury for most of the season, Backley responded
valiantly in the Olympic final on 3 August with a first round throw of
87.44m. Zelezny (see photo above) had fouled his first round
throw, but on his second attempt he threw 88.16m to win the gold medal
from Backley and successfully defend his Olympic title. (Ron Casey)
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