Thrower forced to quit

Press, 15 July 1987, Page 49

Thrower forced to quit

NZPA-Reuter East Berlin Persistent injury has forced the retirement of the East German, Uwe Hohn, the only athlete ever to throw the Javelin more than 160 m and the man who effectively changed the nature of the event. Hohn announced he was quitting the sport yesterday, three days before his twenty-fifth birthday, because of chronic back pains. It marked a tragically premature end to a brilliant

career which had promised to bring much more than the one big title he won as the 1982 European champion. But Hohn will go down in history thanks to his astonishing 104.80 m world record at the East Berlin “Olympic Day” meeting on July 20, 1984, a throw so long it almost landed in the pole vaulters* run-up area. The throw not only broke the previous world record by more than sm, the biggest improvement ever, it set officials scurrying to find ways of making the

event safer. Last year, a new javelin was introduced with the fulcrum shifted 4cm forward to act as a brake on long throws, making it virtually certain that Hohn’s East Berlin effort will be the only time a javelin will ever fly beyond the 100 m mark. Hohn, a sports student from Potsdam, just outside Berlin, appeared on the international scene when he won the European junior title in 1981 and took the full European crown the next year in Athens.