Did you enjoy the deepest discus competition in history the other night? If your answer to that question is “yes,” then boy oh boy do I have some news for you! The men’s javelin competition last night might have been even better somehow. Just like the previous night, we saw the two best throws in Olympic history, except this time they were both by the same guy. Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem hit a massive throw of 92.97m tonight, moving him to sixth on the all-time list and shattering the previous Olympic record. Defending champion Neeraj Chopra did everything he could, producing the second-best mark of his career, but it was only good enough to manage silver against the best Olympic performance ever. Two-time World champion Anderson Peters took bronze, giving him his first Olympic medal.

Here’s what you need to know:

- The qualifying round told us that this final was going to be insane. Five of the 12 qualifiers hit a season’s best, one hit a personal best, and Brazil’s Luiz Mauricio Da Silva hit a new South American record of 85.91m. In total, nine men cleared the auto-qualifying mark of 84.00m, more than in any other throwing event.

- The final got off to a strong start as Keshorn Walcott, the champion from London 2012, opened with a mark of 86.16m. Peters took the lead at 87.87m early in round two, but then Nadeem took to the runway.

- After fouling his first throw, Nadeem unleashed a 92.97m throw to break Andreas Thorkildsen’s Olympic record of 90.57m by well over 2m. It was the farthest throw the world had seen in two years, moved Nadeem to sixth on the all-time list, and goes down in the record books as the 16th-best performance in history.

- Chopra, Nadeem’s rival and friend, answered as best he could with 89.45m a few throws later, but nobody was able to come within three-and-a-half meters of Nadeem today.

- Peters bettered his place with a 88.54m effort in round four after having been passed by Jakub Vadlejch, securing bronze in the process.

- Just for kicks, with the competition entirely wrapped up at the end of round six, Nadeem unleashed another herculean throw of 91.79m to close out the competition.

By the numbers:

- Along with the Olympic record, Nadeem also broke the Asian area record that was previously held by Chao-Tsun Cheng of Chinese Taipei. Nadeem’s competition schedule is very bizarre and makes it difficult to gauge what kind of shape he’s in. In the last three years, he’s only competed in seven meets, and four of those have been World Championships, Olympics, or Commonwealth Games. This gold is the first individual gold in Olympic history by a Pakistani athlete, the first medal in track and field for Pakistan, and the first medal for Pakistan in any sport since 1992.

- Chopra has now landed on each of the last four global podiums, collecting gold in Tokyo and Budapest and silver in Eugene and Paris. He owns half of the Olympic medals collected by Indian athletes in track and field ever, and is the only Indian track and field athlete to win a medal since 1900.

- Peters came into his second Olympics as the only man aside from world record holder Jan Železný to win multiple World championships, but this is his first Olympic medal. Prior to last week, Kirani James was the only Grenadian athlete to ever medal at the Olympic Games. Now, Lindon Victor (decathlon) and Peters have added their names to that list, too.

- With medalists hailing from Pakistan, India, and Grenada, this competition marks the first time in history that an Olympic javelin podium, men’s or women’s, had no European throwers. It’s also the first time at any global championship that a men’s javelin podium has had no Europeans.

- Vadlejch came up 5cm short of making his fifth global podium. His finishing mark of 88.50m is just 9cm off the best ever fourth-place finish, which he coincidentally holds from the 2022 Stockholm Diamond League. This would’ve been good enough to take either silver or gold dating back to every Olympics since at least 2000.

- Similar to what we saw in the discus competition, these Olympics saw the best ever marks for a fifth-, sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-place finisher. In a cruel twist of fate, Julian Weber, who had finished in fourth in Tokyo, Eugene and Budapest, produced his best ever mark in a championship final with his throw of 87.40m. Unfortunately, the strength of this field meant that he ended up equalling his worst placement at a championship (6th) since his first Olympic appearance in Rio.

Full results:

1. Arshad Nadeem - 92.97m OR

2. Neeraj Chopra - 89.45m

3. Anderson Peters - 88.54m

4. Jakub Vadlejch - 88.50m

5. Julius Yego - 87.72m

6. Julian Weber - 87.40m

7. Keshorn Walcott - 86.16m

8. Lassi Etelätalo - 84.58m

9. Oliver Helander - 82.68m

10. Toni Keränen - 80.92m

11. Luiz Mauricio Da Silva - 80.67m

12. Andrian Mardare - 80.10m

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