Canada’s Damian Warner and Austria’s Verena Preiner, the bronze medallists in the decathlon and heptathlon respectively at the IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019, topped the end-of-season standings in the 2019 IAAF Combined Events Challenge.
Warner, the challenge runner-up in 2013 and 2017, won the overall title for the first time, tallying 25,753 points. Preiner, fourth in the 2018 standings, was also a first time winner with 19,623 points.
The scoring system takes each athlete’s three best marks from the series and combines the points into an overall score. Prize money is awarded to the top eight finishers at the end of the challenge. The athlete with the highest score wins US$30,000.
Warner, 29, pieced together the most consistent season of his career, opening with a world-leading 8711 in Gotzis. He then won the Pan-American Games title in Lima with 8513 before capping his season with 8529 in Doha.
Maicel Uibo of Estonia, who scored a career best of 8604 to earn silver in Doha, finished second in the challenge with 25,138. He opened his campaign with an 8353 performance in Gotzis to finish third, six weeks before an 8181 tally to finish second at the European Team Championships in Lutsk, Ukraine.
Canadian Pierce LePage, 23, opened his season with an 8453 career best for the win at the Decastar meeting in Talence, France. He was second at the Pan-American Games with 8161 and fifth at the World Championships with 8445.
Preiner, 24, also produced a strong breakout season. Opening with a 6472 victory in Arona, Spain, the Austrian pieced together a 6591 national record to win in Ratingen, Germany, three months before her 6560 performance in Doha.
Erica Bougard, who finished fourth in Doha, was second in the challenge with 19,507 points. The 26-year-old produced a 6663 season’s best to take the US title in July. Bougard was second in the standings in 2018.
Her teammate Kendell Williams, who was fifth in Doha, tallied 19,437 to finish third in the challenge. Williams, 24, set a 6610 lifetime best at the US Championships.
Recently crowned world champions Pawel Fajdek of Poland and DeAnna Price of the USA topped the end-of-year standings for the 2019 IAAF Hammer Throw Challenge. Fajdek won the challenge for the fifth time, adding to victories in 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017. For Price, it was her first finish atop the standings.
The 30-year-old Fajdek, who collected a fourth straight world title in Doha earlier this month, won handily, more than four points (or metres) ahead of Wojciech Nowicki, the challenge winner in 2018. Fajdek won 10 of 13 competitions overall in 2019, with each of those three defeats to Nowicki. Hungary’s Bence Halasz, the world bronze medallist, was third in the season-long standings to equal his challenge finish from 2018.
The women’s battle was close, with just 21 centimetres separating Price from Wang Zheng, the Chinese star who took bronze at the World Championships. Price, who this year marked her first appearance in year-end standings, tallied 226.55 points.
Wang, the challenge runner-up in 2017 and a distant seventh last year, collected 226.34 points, well clear of Poland’s Joanna Fiodorow, the world silver medallist, who tallied 224.46 to finish third.
The scoring system takes each athlete’s three best marks from the series and equates metres to points. Prize money is awarded to the top 12 finishers at the end of the challenge. The athlete with the highest score wins US $30,000. In order to be ranked and earn prize money, an athlete must have taken part in a minimum of three meetings.
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