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16 Oct 2025 11:02
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  •   Home > News > Sports > Athletics

    Matt Denny finishes fourth in farcical discus competition at World Athletics Championships 2025 in Tokyo

    Matt Denny was one discus thrower who ended up slipping and sliding across the Tokyo National Stadium as heavy rain made the discus competition a farce.

    22 September 2025

    Matt Denny finished in an agonising fourth place in a farcical discus final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.

    The competition was significantly delayed by torrential rain that hit Tokyo, turning the throwing circle into a treacherous, unnavigable death trap.

    Mykolas Alekna managed a legal throw, but Denny slid on the circle and fell as the heavens opened, leading to a cessation in the competition for two hours.

    "He is pissed off," Nina Kennedy said, as Denny flung the discus away.

    "This isn't what elite sport is about."

    The competition was restarted after the conclusion of all the other events and the closing ceremony, after consultation with the athletes.

    "The vast majority of discus athletes want the competition to take place tonight," a World Athletics statement read.

    "Every effort will be made to keep the circle and surrounding area dry and the competition will commence.

    "The athletes have been offered the opportunity to wear any shoes they feel are safe.

    "We thank all teams for their cooperation, and wish all discus athletes the best of luck under very difficult conditions."

    Wearing a variety of different footwear — Denny taped his standing foot, others wore trainers and German Mika Sosna went into the cage in his socks in a bid to find some grip — the athletes resumed, with volunteers dabbing at the torrent of water with towels.

    But the problems remained.

    "I'm finding this really hard to watch," Tamsyn Manou said on SBS as competitors slipped and slid across the circle.

    "Someone could get really hurt."

    Austrian thrower Lukas Weißhaidinger slipped and fell badly in the circle, as did Mario Díaz of Cuba.

    It clearly had an impact, with just three athletes throwing further than they did in qualifying in dry conditions on Saturday morning.

    "I've watched track and field for my whole life, and I've never seen as many falls as this night," Kennedy said on Nine.

    "This is just getting dangerous and silly at this point."

    Out of 52 attempts in the final, a whopping 50 per cent were fouled, with Henrik Janseen failing to record a single distance. 

    "This is not a fair competition," veteran commentator Bruce McAvaney said on SBS.

    "It has been rushed."

    Denny said he felt the competition should have been delayed to the next day.

    "I just said if there's an option to throw tomorrow, I don't care if there's 100,000 people or zero people, like we did zero people for the Olympics in '21,” Denny said.

    "But I understand that people have flights, people have things booked, people are ready to go.

    "It's just really hard, really emotional and disappointing."

    Daniel Ståhl won the competition with his final throw, launching the discus 70.47m to beat Mykolas Alekna (67.84m).

    "This was my first rainy championships ever," Ståhl said. 

    "I tried to focus today as much as possible, focus on not giving up and just staying positive. Sometimes things like this happen. There are delays, the competition takes time. I just tried to reboot my energy.

    "If I thought I was going to make a fault, I would make it. 

    "You have to have this different mentality — if it's raining, you have to be ready for it. 

    "Today wasn't slippery for me at all because I have really good shoes."

    Alenka, meanwhile, said he "never imagined that the conditions were going to be like that."

    Alex Rose finished in bronze medal position with 66.96m, winning Samoa it's first ever world championship medal.

    Athletics Australia president Jane Flemming told ABC Sport she had "never seen a discus competition like it".

    "Discus and high jump are probably the two worst track and field competitions to conduct in the rain, very dangerous," she said.

    "Matt I think would be really disappointed with fourth, but it would have been terribly hard to have normal expectations given what the conditions were."

    © 2025 ABC, NZCity


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