Hammer ace Dry aims for World Championships
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Burghead hammer thrower Mark Dry
A PERSONAL best throw has helped Moray hammer ace Mark Dry go from “awful” to “awesome” in the space of a few weeks.
Now the Burghead athlete has this year’s World Athletics Championships and the London Olympics firmly in his sights.
Dry (23) admitted he was surprised but elated to throw over 72 metres for the first time in his career at the Loughborough international meeting last Sunday.
His mighty 72.49m hurl wasn’t enough to pip fellow Scot and former training partner, Andy Frost, to first place in the event, but has given the Moray man a major lift with some big goals to aim for over the next year.”
“Considering I’ve had a pretty bad start to the season, this was an absolutely massive jump up in performance for me,” he said. “For me to go over 72 metres was just awesome – I was over the moon.
“I’d had five awful competitions and, in my eyes, things were not going well at all. But this has given me a huge confidence boost.”
Based in Loughborough, he has been struggling to earn a living and devote enough time to training at the same time. This year, he secured full-time employment as a delivery driver, but the extra hours meant his preparation for tournaments suffered and he was mentally as well as physically drained.
At the European Cup winter throws in Sofia in March, he failed to get past the 64-metre mark and finished sixth. Earlier this month, he returned to Gothenburg in Sweden, scene of last year’s previous PB throw of 71.88m, but was almost six metres short of that mark in fourth place.
But with last weekend’s hammer competition at Loughborough taking place on a Sunday, Dry believes getting a free Saturday to rest and psych himself up for action paid dividends as he produced his best-ever performance to date.
“It’s been a long time in coming, but I still believed I had this throw in me,” he said.
Sunday’s 72.49m throw was not enough to beat fellow Woodford athlete Frost’s winning effort of 72.79, also a personal best. The pair are now second and third in the all-time Scottish hammer throwers list behind Dry’s former coach Chris Black (75.40m), and both men are set for more tussles as the season progresses.
For Dry, his big throw has raised his hopes of qualifying for the World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, in August, and the ultimate goal of making next year’s London Olympics.
He is aiming to reach the 74 metre mark, which is Olympic ‘B’ qualifying standard, and he believes if he manages two throws beyond that distance between now and July, and no-one else from Britain beats him, he can make the Worlds.
The Moray man is next in action at Bedford in the Inter Counties meeting, followed by a British League Premiership event in Cardiff and the Bedford International Games next month, and the British Championships in July.
