Gerd Kanter

Gerd Kanter ( born May 6, 1979 in Tallinn, Estonian SSR, USSR) is an Estonian athlete. He was 2007 World Champion and 2008 Olympic champion in discus throw.

Sporting career and achievements

Kanter participated in the European Championships in Munich in 2002, where he was twelfth. At the 2003 World Championships and the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, he did not reach the final battle. In the 2005 season he reached the top. On 28 April 2005, he achieved his personal best of 70.10 m ( Estonian national record ) and surprised in the final of the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki, where he lay until the last throw of the Olympic champion Virgilijus Alekna (Lithuania ) in the lead and in the end the silver medal won. Following the World Championships he won the gold medal at the Summer Universiade 2005 in the Turkish city of Izmir. Behind Alekna he also won the silver medal at the European Championships in 2006 in Gothenburg.

His first major success came the Este at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka where he won the gold medal at the German Robert Harting with a width of 68.94 m. A year later, Kanter Olympic champion in Beijing. With 68.82 meters he threw in the fourth attempt exactly one meter further than second-placed Pole Piotr Małachowski. At the World Championships in Berlin in 2009, he was with a width of 66.88 m third and lost after one year and 28 victories in his first competition series.

2010 Kanter was fourth at the European Championships. In the subsequent 2011 World Championships in Daegu, he finished behind the German Robert Harting second place. The same result he succeeded at the European Championships 2012 in Helsinki. In London he was in the Olympics his 2008 success, not repeat, as a third party, however, he took again an Olympic medal. Another bronze medal he won at the World Athletics Championships 2013 in Moscow.

Kanter's personal best is 73.38 m. This width that is at the same time Estonian national record, he reached on 4 September 2006 at the meeting in Helsingborg, Sweden. In this contest he was able to exceed four times the 70 -meter mark. The width of 73.38 m was the third longest throw in an official competition in the history of the discus throw. Only Jürgen Schult's world record of 74.08 meters in 1986 and Virgilijus Aleknas 73.88 meters in 2000 were on.

Gerd Kanter has a contest weight of 120 kg at a height of 1.96 m.

Honors

In 2007 he was elected Athlete of the Year in Estonia. After his Olympic victory in 2008 Gerd Kanter was issued in honor of Estonia in a postage stamp.