Heri Ziska 47 centimetres from the silver medal, but finished No. 5

Machine-translated from Faroese and not yet reviewed. Read the original.

Today we had only one athlete competing. But it was one of our strong cards that we played this evening. 11 Island Games and 13 medals, two of them gold, was what discus thrower Heri Ziska had on his scoreboard before he stepped into the throwing area this evening. Hopes of a medal were quite good. Although the battle for gold seemed settled beforehand, which also proved to be the case, the most recent results of the three nearest contenders were very close. And one of them was Heri.

With this third throw Heri sends the discus out to 43.29 metres, which was enough for fifth place, just 47 cm from silver!

Heri’s Faroese record dates from 1994, when he threw 48.50 metres. In recent years Heri has thrown between 40 and 43 metres, but his form has improved over the last six months, so a throw beyond 44 metres was by no means impossible. In his first attempt the discus flew out to 40.94. Apart from the unbeatable Zane Duquemin, who was well beyond 50 metres, two others also threw 43 metres in the first round. His second attempt went out to 40.36, so there was no improvement there. The third attempt went better. This time the discus landed at 43.29 metres, but that was just not enough to move further up. Instead, Erik Larsen threw himself straight afterwards into second place with 43.76 metres, so Heri now lay No. 5.

After the third round the top eight went through to the final, where they got three more attempts. And in Heri’s fourth throw it finally looked like it would come off. Unfortunately his right foot had just been on top of the throwing circle, and the throw was ruled a foul and therefore not measured. But this was his best throw, and it also looked to be around the 44 metres. Very unfortunate, because it could have sent Heri up to 2nd place.

In his last attempt Heri needed to get beyond 43.59 metres if there was to be any hope of a medal

Both the 5th and 6th throws went wrong, and were only 37-38 metres. So Heri finished in 5th place, just 47 cm behind the silver medallist. So it can hardly be said that luck was on Heri’s side this evening. The final result was as follows:

1st	Zane Duquemin	Jersey		56.43	Gold
2nd	Erik Larsson	Gotland		43.76	Silver
3rd	Genro Paas	Saaremaa		43.59	Bronze
4th	Garry Newton	Isle of Wight		43.36
5th	Heri Ziska	Faroe Islands		43.29
6th	Karl-Johan Sommarström	Åland		39.36
7th	Lee Corlett	Isle of Man		38.98
8th	Mattias Sunneborn	Gotland		37.26
9th	Richard Bell	Isle of Man		25.83