As the two Belarussians stepped up to the ring for their final throws, you could understand if the event leader Slovenia’s Primoz Kozmus might have had a lump in his throat. Was this to be a repeat of last summer’s World Championships final in Osaka, when the Slovenian had also entered the final round in the lead but had lost it to a mighty last throw from Belarussia’s Ivan Tikhon (Tsikhan)?

The World championship silver medallist endured the agony, and when Tikhon, who with 81.51 (5th round) was lying in bronze threw 80.87, and then his compatriot Vadim Devyatovskiy (81.61, 2nd round) blasted his final effort into the steel and netting of the cage, Kozmus roared his approval presumably with a mixture of joy and relief.

It would have been the greatest injustice for Kozmus to have lost this title. For only the second time in Olympic history, the previous was Sergey Litvinov in 1988, we witnessed a six throw series of which every result was over 80m.

Kozmus’ winning best of 82.02 came in the second round. The 28-year-old had come into this final with a season’s best of 81.46, with his national record of 82.30 standing from last summer, which gives us a gauge of his superb form in Beijing.

He had taken the lead in the opening round with 80.75, and after his ultimately winning throw, followed with 80.79, 80.64, 80.98 and 80.85.

Kozmus is said to have been concentrating on his speed in the circle this year, and despite commenting after his win that he was slightly losing control of the hammer just before the release, we are starting to get into technical nit picking here on the gold medallists own part, as he was vision of fluency in motion for the stadium crowd which again was at 91,000 capacity.

No one except the two Belarussians had any real response to Kozmus and though their best releases sent huge cheers ringing around the Bird’s Nest they were still statistically a long way distant.

The top five throwers were all above 80m, among them defending champion Koji Murofushi of Japan who put up a creditable display (80.71). Ahead of him in fourth was Hungary’s Krisztian Pars (80.96).

Aside the winner the only athlete to get a season’s best was Finland’s Olli-Pekka Karjalainen in sixth (79.59).

2000 Olympic champion Szymon Ziolkowski was seventh (79.22), and Slovak Libor Charfreitag, who last summer had taken the World bronze was eighth (78.65).

“I wasn’t very happy with my technique but I was pleased I put together a good series,” said Kozmus. “When I threw the 82m I was expecting that an 83m throw would win. I was expecting Tikhon to throw 83 but he didn’t!”

“I felt less pressure this year than for Osaka because I knew I was better this year overall.”

Some credit for Simona Kozmus, his 2-year-older sister, who holds the national women’s record (58.60m), as she had embarked into the world of hammer throwing first and Primoz had followed her example when he took up athletics.

The gold medal today was Slovenia’s first ever track and field title in the history of the Olympics.

Chris Turner for the IAAF