Virgilijus Alekna

Virgilijus Alekna

Virgilijus Alekna at 2014 Lithuanian Championships in Athletics
Personal information
Nationality	Lithuanian
Born	13 February 1972 Terpeikiai, Lithuanian SSR, Soviet Union
Height	2.02 m (6 ft 7 ^1⁄2 in)
Weight	130 kg (290 lb)
Sport
Sport	Athletics
Event(s)	Discus throw
Achievements and titles
Personal best(s)	73.88 m (2000)
Medal record Event 1st 2nd 3rd Olympic Games 2 0 1 World Championships 2 2 0 European Championships 1 1 1 Continental Cup 4 1 0 Total 9 4 2 Olympic Games 2000 Sydney Discus 2004 Athens Discus 2008 Beijing Discus World Championships 2003 Paris Discus 2005 Helsinki Discus 1997 Athens Discus 2001 Edmonton Discus European Championships 2006 Gothenburg Discus 2002 Munich Discus 1998 Budapest Discus IAAF World Athletics Final 2003 Monte Carlo Discus 2005 Monte Carlo Discus 2006 Stuttgart Discus 2009 Thessaloniki Discus 2007 Stuttgart Discus
Updated on 12 August 2012.

Virgilijus Alekna (Lithuanian pronunciation: ​[vʲɪrʲˈɡʲɪlʲɪjʊs ɐlʲɛkˈnɐ]; 13 February 1972) is a Lithuanian former discus thrower and politician. He won medals at the 2000, 2004 and 2008 Olympics, including two golds. After retiring from athletics, Alekna was elected to the national parliament, the Seimas, in 2016.

Athletics career

Alekna has won two gold medals in the Summer Olympics in the discus throw, the first was in 2000 and the second in 2004. He also won the bronze medal at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. In 2007, he was appointed as UNESCO Champion for Sport. His personal record is 73.88 meters (242 ft 4½ in), surpassed only by the world record (74.08 m.).

Performance in major competitions
Year	Competition	Place	Distance (meters)
1994	European Championship	17	56.38
1995	World Championship	19	59.20
1996	Summer Olympics	5	65.30
1997	World Championship	2	66.70
1998	European Championship	3	66.46
1999	World Championship	4	67.53
2000	Lithuanian Athletics Championships	1	73.88 (NR)
2000	Summer Olympics	1	69.30
2001	World Championship	2	69.40
2002	European Championship	2	66.62
2003	World Championship	1	69.69
2003	World Athletics Final	1	68.30
2004	Summer Olympics	1[1]	69.89
2004	World Athletics Final	4	63.64
2005	World Championship	1	70.17
2005	World Athletics Final	1	67.64
2006	European Championship	1	68.67
2006	World Athletics Final	1	68.63
2007	World Championship	4	65.24
2007	World Athletics Final	2	65.94
2008	Summer Olympics	3	67.79
2008	World Athletics Final	8	61.03
2009	World Championship	4	66.36
2009	World Athletics Final	1	67.63
2010	European Championship	5	64.64
2011	World Championship	6	64.09
2012	Summer Olympics	4	67.38
2013	World Championship	16	61.91
2014	European Championship	21	59.35

Alekna at his eighth World Championships in 2009, Berlin.

Alekna was awarded the title of the Athlete of the Year for 2000 by Track and Field News. He was also awarded the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas by the government of Lithuania. He became the Lithuanian Sportsman of the Year 4 times (2000, 2004, 2005, and 2006). Since 1995 Alekna has served as a bodyguard of the Lithuanian Prime Minister.

He is married to former long jumper Kristina Sablovskytė-Aleknienė and has two young sons named Martynas and Mykolas.

At a height of 2.00 m (6 ft 7 in), Alekna has an unusually long armspan, measured 2.22m (7 ft 3.5 in), which is helpful in discus throwing. He can make fingerprints on windows of two opposite sides of a bus simultaneously.^[2]

During the 2007 World Championship Virgilijus Alekna competed with an injury. Having sustained the injury on 20 August, he competed in the World Championship's qualification on 28 August^[3] and, as a result, suffered a defeat, which broke his 37 victories in a row over the past two years.^[3]

Political career

In May 2016, Alekna announced he would participate in the elections to the Seimas the following October on the electoral list of the opposition Liberal Movement, without joining the party.^[4] He lost the run-off in Naujamiestis single-member constituency, but was elected to the Twelfth Seimas through the electoral list of the party, where he was rated second.^[5]

References

1. The 2004 Summer Olympics were marked by a scandal when Hungarian athlete Róbert Fazekas was stripped of his gold medal on the Men's discus event after being caught tampering with his urine sample and refusing to release it during his post-event doping exam. The gold medal was then awarded to Virgilijus Alekna. Although Fazekas set an Olympic Record, this was erased from all records, and consequently the Olympic Record was credited to Alekna (whose winning throw in Athens had beaten the old Olympic Record).
2. IAAF
3. (Lithuanian) Eglė Šilinskaitė. Nenugalimąjį metiką įveikė kojos trauma (Unbeatable thrower was defeat by leg injury). Retrieved on 2007-08-29
5. Į Seimą nepateko nė vienas liberalo Remigijaus Šimašiaus valdomo Vilniaus liberalas

External links

• Virgilijus Alekna profile at IAAF
• ALEKNA biography rzutyiskoki.pl