European shot put lead by Andriy Mikhnevich

Belarus’ shot put star Andriy Mikhnevich, the 2003 world champion and 2006 European Athletics Championships silver medallist as well as the 2010 World Indoor Championships silver medallist this winter, laid down the gauntlet to the rest of Europe’s big men with a European-leading mark of 22.09m in Minsk on Wednesday.

At a meeting dedicated to past legends of Belarus athletics at the Dinamo Stadium, he also equalled the national record of Sergey Kasnauskas from 1984 to set the scene for a fantastic duel at the European Athletics Championships later this month with the likes of Poland’s Olympic champion Tomasz Majewski, Germany’s reigning European champion Ralf Bartles and Latvia’s rapidly-improving Māris Urtāns.

The worst of Mikhnevich’s four measured efforts went out to 21.68m. His complete series was: foul, 21.85m, 21.68m, foul, 22.09m. 21.82m.

Among the other good results in Minsk was Natalya Koreyvo’s impressive personal best of 4:06.52 when winning the 1500m. Volha Tsander achieved 71.66m in women’s hammer and Valeriy Svyatokha threw 77.26m to win the men’s competition.