The winner of the Girls’ discus World Youth title came as a surprise to everyone – not least Julia Fischer herself, who entered the championships hoping to win a medal of any colour.

More specifically, she thought bronze would be the best she could win, having seen that Croatia’s Sandra Perkovic and China’s Yuanyuan Jin were entered for the competition. The pair led this year’s World Youth lists with 53.95m and 57.58m respectively – so far ahead of the opposition, it seemed a formality that they would be fighting it out for gold and silver with the rest battling for bronze.

Perkovic and Jin led the qualifying too, but the final saw the formbook being thrown out of the window. Fischer, third in qualifying and third in the throwing order, unleashed the discus out to a personal best of 51.39 in the opening round – a mark the favourites came close to, but could not quite beat.

Channelling her nervous energy

Perkovic’s qualifying throw (52.54m) would have been enough to win the final but her best in the evening session was just 51.25m, while Jin threw 51.20m. An elated Fischer could not believe her luck.

“I wanted to win a medal all along,” said Fischer, who stands in excess of 1.85m. “I was pretty nervous because I knew the Chinese girl and Croatian girl could throw far and the British girl was a danger too. But maybe I made them nervous with my first throw – they couldn’t seem to match it!”

Read more Fischer reels in global title from iaaf.org