Nesterenko – determined to make it as a senior 15. July 07

Ostrava, Czech Republic - He is perhaps one of the most precociously talented youngsters in the world at the moment, but Mykyta Nesterenko – despite being just 16 years old – is looking beyond age group success and already has one eye on establishing himself as a star senior performer.
The stats are staggering. Standing at 202cm tall and weighing in at 97kg, Nesterenko last year threw the 1kg discus 81.22m – his first World Youth best. One year on and moving up in weight, Nesterenko set a World Youth best at the start of this season with the under-18 weight 1.5kg discus, unleashing it out to 71.95m.

Just as impressive are his results with the senior weight discus. He set a world age-15 best last year of 55.80m and improved massively this year to 62.79 to rank in the world’s top 40. Needless to say it is a World Youth best, as well as a world age-15, 16, 17 and 18 best!

Not forgetting, of course, his exploits in his secondary event, the shot. He set a Ukrainian youth record of 21.35m back in May.

Ups and downs in Ostrava

But his Shot Put throwing did not go to plan this week. His first throw in the final was huge, but landed outside the sector. His second attempt was a safety one and landed at just 17.52m, which remained his best after a further minor foul in the last round.

The discus, however, was the event that mattered more to him. He set a competition record of 70.67m with his first throw in qualifying – more than six metres further than the previous best, held by Australia’s Ronnie Buckley. Although Nestrenko could not quite match that throw in the final, his 68.54m was more than enough to see off the challenge of Croatia’s Marin Premeru.

“I’m happy about the victory but not with the distance I threw,” said Nesterenko after picking up his discus gold medal – his second global title, having won the ISF World Schools discus title last year.

“In the Shot Put I was hoping for at least a bronze, so when that didn’t happen I was determined to win gold in the discus,” he added. “I was hoping to throw a World Youth best – even if it was just by one centimetre – but that didn’t work out.”

He will put aside celebrating his victory for the time being because he has a few competitions coming up after the World Youth Championships, the first one being in Serbia. “But I’ll celebrate at the end of the season,” he is quick to add.

Background in basketball

Nesterenko’s first sporting exploits came in basketball. “I didn’t like competing in a team sport though,” he said. “I’m more of an individual, so I chose to switch to athletics.”

He tried running events for the first few months, but found that he was too tall to be successful. Instead, he decided to put his height to better use and took up the throws instead. That was four years ago and he has been coached by Viktor Oleynik ever since.

The youngster, who will still be a youth athlete next year, looks up to Olympic champion Virgilijus Alekna – “he has got a great technique and is very consistent” – and current World leader Gerd Kanter – “he has good speed and balance” – but Nesterenko wants to go where neither of those two athletes have been before.

Ambitions to break World record

“My dream is to break the World record,” he says. “But before then I just want to make sure that I progress to the senior level.”

Nesterenko is referring to the past World Youth champions, who have struggled to make an impact as a senior. The four previous gold medal-winners – Chang Ming-Huang, Khalid Habash Al Suwaidi, Ronnie Buckley and Ali Shahrokhi – all threw further than 60 metres to win their World Youth titles, but have not been able to match that distance with the senior implement.

It should be mentioned, however, that the silver and bronze medallists from the 2001 World Youths – Robert Hartins and Omar El Ghazaly – have both progressed well and have thrown PBs in excess of 66 metres this year.

Nesterenko, however, is miles ahead of all the previous World Youth medallists in terms of development and he is determined to keep it that way as he progresses towards the senior ranks – an age group he will not join until 2011!

“I’m very aware that all the previous World Youth champions have not been successful as a senior,” he said. “I’m confident that I can, though.”

Read Nesterenko – determined to make it as a senior from iaaf.org


results

		Discus (1.5kg) - Boys
Pos	Bib	Athlete	Country	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	Mark
1	699	Nesterenko Mykyta	UKR	52.45	63.81	65.54	65.14	68.54	X	68.54
2	126	Premeru Marin	CRO	63.50	64.20	60.95	X	58.72	X	64.20	(PB)
3	441	Gudzius Andrius	LTU	61.59	X	X	X	54.85	X	61.59	(PB)
4	262	Wolf Gordon	GER	60.54	X	X	X	X	X	60.54
5	721	Tabor Sean	USA	57.09	55.22	55.97	X	59.07	55.13	59.07	(PB)
6	219	Niskala Pyry	FIN	53.24	X	55.13	X	X	56.97	56.97	(PB)
7	237	Griffith-Parker Curtis	GBR	52.23	X	51.91	55.13	X	55.59	55.59
8	224	Baillard Jeremy	FRA	54.32	X	X	54.77	55.22	X	55.22
9	576	Smith Jayson	RSA	46.31	X	52.23	NM	NM	NM	52.23
10	30	Idris Jamal	AUS	50.71	50.99	X	NM	NM	NM	50.99
11	159	Vonavka Tomáš	CZE	46.84	50.10	50.66	NM	NM	NM	50.66
	681	Wilson Quincy	TRI	X	X	X	NM	NM	NM	NM
		Shot Put (5kg) - Boys
Pos	Bib	Athlete	Country	Mark
1	260	Storl David	GER	21.40	(WYL)
2	126	Premeru Marin	CRO	20.42
3	701	Savytskyy Dmytro	UKR	20.15
4	516	Partyka Konrad	POL	19.84
5	656	Gustafsson Simon	SWE	19.71	(PB)
6	112	Sun Bin	CHN	19.69	(PB)
7	617	Špiler Marko	SLO	19.11	(PB)
8	328	Quirke Colin	IRL	18.98
9	726	Dementev Sergey	UZB	18.71
10	721	Tabor Sean	USA	18.10
11	699	Nesterenko Mykyta	UKR	17.52
	253	Müller Hendrik	GER	NM
		Hammer (5kg) - boys
Pos	Bib	Athlete	Country	Mark
1	697	Martynyuk Andriy	UKR	76.09
2	304	Szabó Dániel	HUN	75.30	(PB)
3	255	Olbrich Richard	GER	75.18
4	717	McCullough Conor	USA	74.54
5	221	Räsänen Kai	FIN	74.36	(PB)
6	243	Smith Peter	GBR	72.79	(SB)
7	303	Schvéger Norbert	HUN	72.58
8	59	Dubitski Aleh	BLR	71.83	(PB)
9	501	Henriksen Eivind	NOR	71.10
10	169	El-Ashry Alaa El-Din	EGY	70.14
11	131	Mejias Reinier	CUB	70.11
12	658	Johansson Markus	SWE	67.40
		Javelin (700g) - boys
Pos	Bib	Athlete	Country	Mark
1	217	Laaksonen Tuomas	FIN	79.71	(WYL)
2	34	Peacock Hamish	AUS	76.31	(PB)
3	432	Rütinš Edgars	LAT	74.65	(PB)
4	25	Bissett Luke	AUS	71.33
5	598	Zakharov Nikita	RUS	70.62	(PB)
6	223	Verronen Joonas	FIN	70.53
7	129	Zunic Stipe	CRO	70.25
8	581	van der Merwe Adriaan	RSA	70.00
9	589	Kadukov Kirill	RUS	69.70
10	249	Golling David	GER	67.32
11	729	Shokirjonov Bobur	UZB	66.93
12	157	Vadlejch Jakub	CZE	65.63

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