What has happened to the Belgian javelin thrower, Timothy HERMNAN, is rather exceptional , and quite fabulous. Breaking his PB by 7m at 32 years of age and after a 17 years career , to achieve a world top class performance when , since many years , he was just a member of the ”good” throwers who , most of the time have to satisfy themselves to be allowed to participate from time to time in one of the big meets , to make the numbers at low expense for the organisers and give some sort of opposition to the stars.

We knew Timothy and his father because of the remarkable work they were doing and the multiple videos they published about it in the public medias . A very good work indeed , but which did not seem to produce the expected fruits when Timothy’s progression was rather slow , if not stagnant, along the years .(He was already throwing close to 80m – 78.98m- 10 years ago in 2012 and just at over the 80m line since)

This would have discouraged many people !!!

Well , as can be seen on the attached documents , this throw from Timothy clicks all the cases ! Using the ”diving” option which has been for a long time the credo of a minority of throwers since AL CANTELLO and was refreshed recently by Johannes VETTER.

In fact , the prupose is not really to ”dive” , which would suppose the fact to go down forward, head first, under the pretext to have a longer delivery action beyond  the left side support. But it is more to try to ”rebound” over this left leg then recover balance with a dive , falling quite acrobatically on the arms .

The question  is to not rush forward but to be able to block the left side long enough to stay in double feet ground contact during the arm strike . And this is what Timothy has perfectly succeeded to achieve during this throw

Available documents : 1-HERMAN 87.35m Original video out of TV coverage Nairobi -2-PDF 11 pages technical analysis . commented photo sequence -3-Video analysis with slow mo , freeze framing , picture per picture , mobile kinogramme.