It just so happened that Anita Wlodarczyk first made her mark in international sport on the outskirts of Oxford, the English university city where another of track and field’s big landmarks fell.
On the red dirt cycle track at Horspath Recreation Ground, the future queen of hammer throwing contributed 11 points towards Poland’s victory in the 1998 edition of cycle speedway’s European Junior Nations Cup.
In doing so, just three miles east of the Iffley Road track where Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile barrier in 1954, Wlodarczyk blazed a trail of her own – as the first girl to feature in a five-strong winning national team.
She had just turned 13 at the time.
She was a week shy of her 30th birthday when she followed in Bannister’s footsteps as the breaker of another major barrier in track and field.
By that time, 1 August 2015, Wlodarczyk already had her name in the world record book as a hammer thrower – thrice over, in fact, having thrown 77.96m to win the first of her four world hammer crowns in Berlin in 2009, 78.30m at the Enea Cup on home ground in Bydgoszcz in 2010, and 79.58m at the ISTAF meeting back in the Berlin Olympiastadion in 2014.
It was the 80-metre landmark in the women’s hammer that the former cycle speedway starlet had in her sights as she stepped into the throwing circle in Cetniewo in the Baltic seaside resort of Wladyslawowo 10 years ago.
“I dream of being the first woman to throw 80 metres,” Wlodarczyk told World Athletics as she looked towards the 2015 season the winter after her 79.58m throw in Berlin.
“Breaking the world record, with 79.58m, makes me feel that 80 metres is definitely possible.”
That conviction increased when Wlodarczyk notched a mark of 79.83m in an unratified mixed event at Wroclaw on 27 June 2015. Throwing across the Odra river, from a specially constructed circle, she finished runner-up to the 81.91m of her Polish compatriot Pawel Fajdek, the reigning men’s world champion.
Five weeks later, in the familiar setting of Cetniewo, her customary training base, Wlodarczyk finally achieved her historic goal.
Anita Wlodarczyk with her world record figures in Cetniewo
Dedicated to Skolimowska
Fittingly, she did so in the throws meeting held as a memorial to the late Kamila Skolimowska, her great predecessor as a world-beating Pole on the women’s hammer scene.
Skolimowska was only 17 when she emerged as the surprise winner of the inaugural Olympic women’s hammer competition in Sydney in 2000.
Inspired by the sound of the Polish national anthem being played in honour of Robert Korzeniowski’s victory in the 50km race walk, she unleashed a throw of 71.16m to snatch the gold ahead of Russian favourite Olga Kuzenkova.
The youngest Olympic track and field champion since Ulrike Meyfarth with a high jump triumph at 16 on home ground in Munich in 1972, Skolimowska guided Wlodarczyk through her Olympic debut in Beijing in 2008, failing to record a valid throw herself in the final as her emerging compatriot placed a promising sixth.
Just six months later, Skolimowska died of a blood clot while at a Polish team training camp in Portugal. She was only 26.
The sudden, unexpected loss hit Wlodarczyk hard. She formed a close bond with her late friend’s family and wore Skolimowska’s throwing shoes and gloves at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, initially taking silver before being upgraded to gold following the retrospective doping disqualification of Russia’s Tatyana Lysenko.
Anita Wlodarczyk at the London 2012 Olympic Games (© Getty Images)
“When I entered the Olympic Stadium in London, I asked Kamila to be with me,” she confided. “I won the medal thanks to her and I dedicated it to her.”
Writing history
It was the same when Wlodarczyk stepped into the circle for her second-round effort at the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial Throws Festival in Cetniewo on the first day of August in 2015.
Her opening round attempt had resulted in a foul but this time the thrower from Rawicz in Poland’s mid-west spun balletically in the circle before unleashing a throw that flew out beyond both the world record and 80-metre markers in the sylvan Cetniewo setting.
The throw flashed up on the scoreboard as a stunning 81.08m, an improvement of exactly one and half metres on Wlodarczyk’s 2014 world record in Berlin.
“I have been waiting for this moment for so long,” she said. “This is an unbelievable feeling, to be the first woman to throw over 80 metres.
“I am so happy, especially as I have done it at a competition which is dedicated to my friend, Kamila Skolimowska.
“Today, I have finally fulfilled my dream and written history.”
Donated to the Museum of World Athletics
In April 2019, at the opening ceremony of the Heritage Exhibition in Doha ahead of the World Athletics Championships of that year, Wlodarczyk generously donated the hammer she used for that 81.08m throw to the heritage collection of what since been renamed the Museum of World Athletics (MOWA).
Anita Wlodarczyk hands her golden hammer to World Athletics President Sebastian Coe for the MOWA (© MOWA)
Appropriately, Wlodarczyk had first had the hammer gold plated in celebration of that first throw over 80 metres.
The hammer, which is currently on display in the MOWA Heritage Athletics Exhibition in Tokyo until 21 September 2025, can also be viewed on the museum’s online 3D platform.
Anita Wlodarczyk’s golden hammer (© MOWA)
All-time great
Wlodarczyk has become a serial history-maker since she started utilising the leg strength she gained from her cycle speedway days as a trailblazing hammer thrower.
In the Olympic arena, having retained her title in Rio in 2016, she became the first woman to complete a hat-trick of titles in the same track and field event when she prevailed at the age of 36 at the Tokyo Games.
A world champion in Berlin in 2009, when it took her a first world record to emerge victorious from an epic battle with Germany’s Betty Heidler, Wlodarczyk regained that global title in Moscow in 2013 and retained it in Beijing in 2015 and in London in 2017.
The latter two successes came in a golden streak in which she remained unbeaten in 42 competitions from 2014 to 2017.
There were two further world records in that period, making six in total: 82.29m at the Rio Olympics and 82.98m two weeks later at the Skolimowska Memorial meeting in Warsaw.
Despite four major surgeries – the most recent in 2022 after she tore a muscle while sprinting to apprehend a car thief – the all-time queen of the hammer throw has continued to produce regal form at the tail-end of her fourth decade.
Last year, Wlodarczyk came close to landing her fifth European title, taking silver behind Italy’s Sara Fantini, and she finished a tantalising 4cm shy of the podium in fourth place in the Olympic final in Paris.
A week shy of her 40th birthday, which falls on 8 August, Wlodarczyk has already made her mark on the 2025 season. She claimed victory in the European Team Championships First Division competition in Madrid on 28 June, and finished fourth with a season’s best of 74.70m at the Pre Classic Diamond League meeting in Eugene on 5 July.
Simon Turnbull for World Athletics Heritage
