23-year-old Queenslander Matthew Denny is right in the mix to become Australia’s first athlete to medal at the 2019 World Championships in Doha.
The discus thrower qualified third for tonight’s final, which will take place at 9:15pm local time (4:15am Tuesday morning AEST).
“I’m just happy,” Denny said. “Qualifying is probably the most brutal thing in the comp just trying to get through that, a little bit of expectation there, so just good to get the job done.”
Denny threw 65.08m behind clear favourite Daniel Stahl (67.88m) from Sweden and Jamaican Fedrick Dacres (65.44m).
His distance is also already the best from an Australian at a World Championships meet, passing Benn Harradine’s mark of 64.77 in 2011.
The Aussie’s personal best is 65.37m from three years ago, while his season’s best is 65.28m and heads into the final in a positive frame of mind.
“I definitely think I’m in PB form if I can throw like that, but it’s not about the distance, it’s about can I replicate it in the moment and get my technique together and hit that throw.”
“Obviously Daniel (Stahl) is the one to beat. I’m definitely not going to be the one to say I’m going to try and beat him. The guy is pushing the world record so if he puts half-decent throws together he’s beating everyone.”
At the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, Denny won silver in the hammer throw with a PB 74.88m and was fourth in the discus. But exactly one year ago at a meet in Germany, he decided to focus solely on the discus and ditch the hammer throw.
“I was ready to throw far and I was doing both hammer and discus that weekend. I did the hammer first and competed, threw OK and then went and did the men’s discus and I was cooked.
“I think I got 11th or 10th, I just said to my girlfriend I think it is time to focus on this because I was getting really disappointed in not performing to the best I knew I could in both.”
“Even thinking about it right now, I don’t know how I did that double. It was so jam packed. To do what I did was pretty ridiculous. I do miss it, but I’m glad I made the decision to focus on discus because I’ve just got more time for the goals I wanted to meet for here and Tokyo.”
Denny won the World University Games title in July (65.27m) and came to Doha off a strong training block at the AIS European Training Centre in Italy.
