Former world and Olympic hammer champion Primoz Kozmus talks about the best parts of his athletics career.<h3>My best achievement in athletics</h3>My victory at the Beijing Olympic Games, for sure. It was a big day for me. I was dreaming about that day for all of my career and all my life. To see that dream come true was so exciting. <h3>My best friend in athletics </h3>I will say Sandra Perkovic (world and Olympic discus champion). Because I train a lot with her, she is close to me. I spend a lot of the winter time training with her in Croatia because of the conditions in Slovenia. From the men's side, two of my closest friends are Krisztian Pars and Koji Murofushi.<h3>My biggest disappointment </h3>When I was competing at the 1998 World Junior Championships in Annecy I was expected to make the top eight but I recorded three fouls in qualification and I did not make the final. Back then I was not too experienced and under big pressure. I don&rsquo;t know why it happened, but I had some technical problems and that let me down.<h3>My best piece of advice </h3>That came from the Slovenian discus thrower and my colleague Igor Primc. He told me that of your top five throws of the year, if you manage to throw somewhere in the middle of these five best throws at a major championship that year, then you will have done your job.<h3>My greatest rival&nbsp; </h3>Krisztian Pars of Hungary (the Olympic and European champion). We have had many great competitions over the years and up until 2010 I was better at the big competitions, but now he is on the top. I hope I will be back. He is really strong and he has the speed I don&rsquo;t have, so I need to find a way to technically improve. I have enjoyed all my big competitions against him but maybe my favourite was my victory against him at the Berlin World Championships because he was the favourite that day.&nbsp; <h3>The best athlete I've ever seen </h3>Usain Bolt is something special, but I also really respect Koji Murofushi (Japan&rsquo;s 2004 Olympic and 2011 world champion). He was not such a strong athlete but he trained with a number of new exercises and training methods. He tries to find something new as part of his training all the time.<h3>My greatest weakness</h3>Back injuries. I've had to manage problems in my lower back throughout my career. It does put fear inside me. I've always tried to avoid surgery in order to find a better solution.&nbsp; <h3>My greatest venue </h3>The Bird&rsquo;s Nest Stadium in Beijing. It really is an extra special stadium. Let&rsquo;s say I really felt the energy there and, of course, it helped I won my Olympic gold medal there.<h3>My biggest regret </h3>In the lead up to the London Olympics I made some mistakes in terms of my preparation. I chose the wrong type of exercises and my body didn&rsquo;t react well. I knew I wasn't in the best shape in London. If the Games had been one month later, I believe I would have won gold. (Primoz won the silver behind Krisztian Pars in London).<h3>My greatest achievement outside of athletics</h3>My family. I have a wife, Maja and two children &ndash; four-year-old daughter Maria-Rosa and one-and-a-half-year-old son, Maks &ndash; I am very proud of.Steve Landells for the IAAF

Former world and Olympic hammer champion Primoz Kozmus talks about the best parts of his athletics career.

Personal bests – Primoz Kozmus

An outstanding men's hammer field has been assembled for the 19th Miner’s Day Meeting in Velenje, Slovenia, on Tuesday (1).Most of the world’s top men’s hammer throwers will be in action at the small alpine nation’s premiere annual athletics event, led by Olympic champion Kristian Pars. The 32-year-old Hungarian will arrive riding an eight-meeting winning streak and as the world leader at 81.57m from Ostrava.Pars has lost just once in 11 starts this season. That loss came at the hand of world champion Pawel Fajdek who is also in the field. The Pole’s season’s best also came in Ostrava but at 79.65m is nearly two metres shy of his rival’s. He was a distant third at the European Team Championships, his most recent outing, with 75.26m.After Pars, Dilshod Nazarov has been the season’s most consistent thrower. The winner in Moscow and Zhukovskiy, Nazarov hit his 80.62m season’s best in Ostrava, the second-farthest throw of his career.Russia’s European Team Championships winner Sergey Litvinov, who has a season’s best of 78.77m, is also in the field.Local eyes will focus on former world and Olympic champion Primoz Kozmus, whose early season training was slowed by a series of injuries. With a modest 73.02m season’s best, the Beijing Olympic champion will have a struggle to just finish in the top five.Ratej v Stahl in the javelinThe capacity crowd expected at Velenje’s municipal stadium can expect a significantly better finish by in-form Martina Ratej in the javelin throw.The 32-year-old national record-holder has performed well this season, collecting notable victories at the IAAF Diamond League kick-off meeting in Doha (65.48m) and in Ostrava, and with runner-up finishes at Rome’s Golden Gala and at the European Team Championships first division competition in Tallinn where she battled difficult conditions.She’s hardly a shoe-in for the win however. Carrying the status of favourite is Germany’s Linda Stahl, the Olympic bronze medallist who reached a career best of 67.32m at the IAAF Diamond League stop in New York two weeks ago, currently the farthest throw in the world.The rest of the evening’s programme will largely focus on regional talent chasing standards for the European Championships, with a handful of notable exceptions.The men’s 100m will attract attention, courtesy of Kemarley Brown, a 21-year-old Jamaican newcomer who clocked 9.93 at the California junior college championships in May. Velenje will be Brown’s first race since his dash into the sub-10 club, at the time a short-lived world leading performance. Akani Simini, who clocked a personal best 10.02 to finish runner-up at April’s South African Championships, is also in the field.Elsewhere, Botswana’s Isaac Makwala, who holds national records at all three sprint distances, and Jamaican champion Anneisha McLaughlin lead the fields in the 200m.Germany’s Michelle Weitzel, who has improved her PB to 6.66m this year, leads a competitive long jump field of five women near or beyond the 6.50m mark this season, and in the pole vault Slovenian national record-holder Tina Sutej will square off against German Katharina Bauer.Bob Ramsak for the IAAF

An outstanding men's hammer field has been assembled for the 19th Miner’s Day Meeting in Velenje, Slovenia, on Tuesday (1).

Pars the favourite, but local eyes will be in Kozmus in Velenje

In 1980, the Soviet Union's Sergey Litvinov took the silver medal in the Hammer Throw at the Olympic Games in Moscow behind the great Yuriy Sedykh.Now, 33 years later, can his son and namesake, also called Sergey Litivinov, succeed where the father failed? Figures and form suggest he has a good chance, but, like his father, he faces a mighty battle.Fortunately, Litvinov snr ultimately did not need the 1980 Olympic gold medal to establish his place in the throwers’ pantheon. He went on to win at the first two World Championships, at Helsinki 1983 and then in Rome four years later, and, after the Soviet bloc boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Games, he won the 1988 Olympic crown in Seoul.His great teammate and rival, Sedykh, still holds the World record with the mighty 86.34m heave he produced at the 1986 European Championships and it is reasonably safe to say the World record will survive beyond Moscow 2013.However, Litvinov is a credible contender to do what his father could not – win a gold medal in a global championship title in the Russian capital’s historic Luzhniki Stadium. He has a personal best of 80.98m and threw 80.89m at the Kuts Memorial meeting in Moscow on 15 July to lie second in the world on the 2013 list.The biggest obstacle in Litvinov’s path is, obviously, Hungary’s London 2012 Olympic Games champion Krisztian Pars, who is undefeated in 12 competitions this year.The 31-year-old, a World youth champion way back in 1999, made a steady transition to senior ranks before really coming into his own in the last few years.Fifth on his Olympic debut in Athens 2004, Pars has successively finished seventh in Helsinki 2005, fifth in Osaka 2007, fourth at the Olympic Games in Beijing and then Berlin 2009; and then third at the 2010 European Athletics Championships and second in Daegu two years ago, before crowning his rise with the gold medal in London last year ahead of Slovenia’s defending champion Primoz Kozmus and Japan’s 2004 Olympic Games winner and 2011 World champion Koji Murofushi.Kozmus and Murofushi remain somewhat sparing in their number of competitions this summer, but still lurk around the sharp end of the world lists with 78.83m and 76.42m, respectively. Sydney 2000 Olympic champion Szymon Ziolkowski has been more active in competition, though his best this year is 78.79m but on their records, all three must be respected.Tajikistan’s Dilshod Nazarov and Czech Republic’s Lukas Melich are the only other two men to have breached the 80m mark this year.Nazarov briefly held the world lead with his 80.71m in Germany back in May, but the 31-year-old’s record in major championships – 11th in Beijing and Berlin, 10th in Daegu and London – suggests he is more likely to be a finalist again than a medallist.Melich threw a personal best of 80.28m in Poland in June. The 32-year-old has been up around the 80 metres mark for the past two years and finished sixth in London, so he must be rated as a medal chance in Moscow.Of the younger throwers, Poland’s Pawel Fajdek has twice thrown 79.99m this year, including when winning at the Universiade in Kazan last month ahead of Slovakia’s Marcel Lomnicky, who reached 78.73m for the silver medal.Fajdek was also the only man to beat Pars last year although he had a disaster at the Olympics with three no-throws in qualifying.Russia’s other two representatives, Aleksey Zagorniy and Aleksey Korolyev, have solid if not spectacular credentials.The event has a very even field this year, apart from the super-consistant Pars.Less than two metres covers the world top 10. As ever, it will not be what men throw at their best which decides the outcome, but what they can produce under the highest competition pressure, as Pars showed when he won his Olympic gold last summer.Click&nbsp;<a href="http://www.iaaf.org/competitions/iaaf-world-championships/14th-iaaf-world-championships-4873/athletes">here</a> for OFFICIAL ENTRIES in the Moscow 2013 Athletes’ section.Len Johnson for the IAAF

Men's Hammer Throw – Preview

In 1980, the Soviet Union's Sergey Litvinov took the silver medal in the Hammer Throw at the Olympic Games in Moscow behind the great Yuriy Sedykh.

Slovenia’s 2008 Olympic champion Primoz Kozmus came out on top of the latest round of the men’s IAAF Hammer Throw Challenge, held in conjunction with the Karlstad Grand Prix in Sweden, throwing 77.69m on Tuesday (23).Kozmus,&nbsp;who also won the 2009 World title and took the silver medal last summer at the London 2012 Olympic Games,  won by more than a metre from Slovakia’s Marcel Lomnicky, who was second with 76.66m.Oleksiy Sokyrskyy took an early lead with 75.86m in the opening round and although the Ukrainian improved to 76.35m in the next round, which was to suffice for third place, Kozmus took control of the contest with his second throw, sending it out to 77.44m.He improved further to 77.69m in the third round and finished off with a foul and two throws over 76 metres.Lomnicky was lying third going into the last round but produced his best throw with his last effort to leapfrog Sokyrskyy into second place.Kozmus has only thrown in two Challenge meetings this year and so currently lies down in ninth place, with Hungary’s Olympic champion Krisztian Pars leading the way in the men’s contest with an overall total 242.50m.The next Challenge meeting, for both men and women, will be the IAAF World Championships. There are four more meetings after Moscow during August and September at which athletes can improve their position in the standings.In other events, the highlights included Sweden’s newly-crowned World youth 200m champion Irene Ekelund, who sprinted to a 23.27 win over her compatriot Moa Hjelmer, who was second in 23.54.In the Long Jump, Erica Jarder jumped close to her best with a meeting record of 6.58m.Kenya’s Cornelius Kangogo won the 3000m in another meeting record of 7:49.98, just holding off Djibouti’s Hiss Bachir Youssouf, who was second in a personal best of 7:50.96 while Estonia’s Tiindrek Nurme was third in 7:51.49, which was also a personal best.Estonia’s Risto Matas threw the javelin out 81.36m to beat the home favourite Kim Amb, who could only manage 79.79m. Eritrea’s Meraf Bahta took the women’s 1500m win in 4:12.63.There were sprint hurdles wins for Norway’s Isabelle Pedersen in 13.41 and Spain’s Franciso Javier Lopez in 13.78.A correspondent for the IAAF &nbsp;

Kozmus the hammer king of Karlstad - IAAF Hammer Throw Challenge

Kozmus the hammer king of Karlstad – IAAF Hammer Throw Challenge

Slovenia’s 2008 Olympic champion Primoz Kozmus came out on top of the latest round of the men’s IAAF Hammer Throw Challenge, held in conjunction with the Karlstad Grand Prix in Sweden, throwing 77.69m on Tuesday (23).