Daniel Ståhl took WC gold with a monster throw – in a sensationally tense situation.
Then Lasse Granqvist sticks out his chin:
– I actually claim that it is a top 10 performance in Swedish sports history.
Daniel Ståhl did not enter this year’s athletics WC as world number one, and it looked for a while as if he would be snubbed for a second WC gold. Kristjan Ceh pulled off a throw just over 70 meters with the penultimate throw of the competition, and then and there it looked like Ståhl would have to settle for a silver.
“Top ten ever”
A more pressured position will be difficult to find, but with his, and the competition’s, last throw, Ståhl answered for a great effort, when he got the discus 71.46 – a new championship record, and an extremely well-deserved gold. Now experts believe that Ståhl is the super favorite to win the Bragdguldet, and this week he has received such fantastically well-deserved tributes from the Swedish people.
And now Lasse Granqvist joins the chorus of praise. The popular presenter comes with the most powerful of tributes in the Sporthuset podcast.
– I have to say this: For me, it is the top ten in Swedish sporting achievements of all time, he says.
Granqvist continues:
– So this something quite exceptional. It is at the absolute, extreme extreme elite level. There is no debate about it.
READ MORE: Daniel Ståhl’s completely clever answer to the unexpected question after the WC gold success: “That was fun”
Powerful tribute
Lasse Granqvist also believes that the performance will be even greater considering that, for reasons of unusualness, there was no wind in the arena. Ståhl thus received absolutely no help from the wind – and yet he managed to secure a new championship record.
– I understood that there were tough conditions here. It was a closed arena, there is no help from the wind. It will be like a lid over the arena and it was 30 degrees. And Ceh goes past Ståhl with a 70-meter throw! It was huge! It was the biggest thing that happened in Slovenian sports, I imagine. And one thought: “Damn! But silver is still quite okay”. And he looks completely unaffected, Daniel Ståhl, totally focused on what he has to do. And he lifts the plate away. And you hear Ståhl screaming in the broadcast. And then it’s so far that you just jump up and scream. In the last throw of the competition! And then it is at a level that we so rarely get to experience.
Lasse Granqvist and pair horse Tommy Åström have previously talked about this year’s Bragdguld, and how difficult it will be for the committee to avoid Sarah Sjöström – who, however, has already received it twice, which is the maximum allowed. But now Bragdguldet does not have to change its statutes, says Granqvist.
– We sat and talked about whether there were reasons for the editor-in-chief of Svenska Dagbladet to call a meeting, to make an exception. But that conversation – without detracting from Sarah Sjöström’s performance – but it comes a little more in lane two, to use swimming parlance.
READ MORE: Daniel Ståhl’s words about the strange images after the feat – now explains: “I’ve seen it…”