Lawrence Okoye Pic: teamgb.com
Lawrence Okoye will compete in the Olympic discus final on August 7 after a testing qualifying round in front of 80,000 spectators.
The athlete, who hails from Croydon, struggled initially when his first throw landed outside the permitted zone, narrowly missing a photographer. On Okoye’s second throw he was on target and landed at 63 meters but this still only left him in 16th place, and only 12 go through.
On his final throw Okoye landed a massive 65.28 metres, passing the automatic qualifying mark. He jumped up the table into fourth place overall and will be the sole Briton in tomorrows final. Meanwhile Beijing gold medallist Estonian Gerd Kanter qualified in first place with a throw of 66.39 metres.
Afterwards Okoye, who has a personal best of 68.24 metres, tweeted: “Words can’t describe how I feel, thanks to EVERYONE for their support! An even bigger day is coming tomorrow!!”
Former Olympic champion Denise Lewis said: “Lawrence Okoye has bags of talent and to produce something like that to reach the final is tremendous”.
The 20-year old athlete, who attended Whitgift School in South Croydon, only took up the discus 18 months ago but has decided to defer his place to read law at St Peter’s college, Oxford.
Catch all the action at 7.45pm.
