Piotr Malachowski, photo by Getty Images / European Athletics
Piotr Malachowski, like many veteran athletes, are extending their careers one more year to compete in Tokyo 2021. This piece was posted on the European Athletics site.
The plan for Piotr Malachowski was to win the Olympic discus title in Tokyo this summer and then bid farewell to competition in front of his home fans and supporters at the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial in Chorzow in early September.
But the decision to formally postpone the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games due to the COVID-19 pandemic – a move which Malachowski publicly called for earlier this week – will keep the veteran Polish discus thrower in the sport for another season.
“I’ve made two important decisions. I will train for the Olympic Games in 2021,” Malachowski told Sport TVP. “I intend to prepare one hundred percent and be really strong and dangerous to my competitors. For this reason, I have to undergo right knee surgery. It’s very difficult for me, but I hope to come back stronger.”
Malachowski, 36, has competed at three successive Olympic Games, reaching the podium twice. He won silver at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing behind his rival-turned-coach Gerd Kanter from Estonia before winning silver eight years later in Rio de Janeiro where the gold medal was taken out of his grasp by Germany’s Christoph Harting with the last throw of the final.
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