Cal Track and Field: Mykolas Alekna Continues Remarkable Ascent in the Discus
Mykolas Alekna is just getting started. But what a start it’s been.
Cal’s sophomore track and field star arrived on campus from his home in Lithuania in the fall of 2021 with a career-best discus throw of 208 feet, 5 inches or 63.52 meters, using the global measurement.
Now he owns the six longest throws in college history, eight of the top 10, and 10 of the top 13.
Late last month at the Big Meet vs. Stanford at Edwards Stadium, Alekna unleashed a heave of 232-11 or 71.00 meters, breaking his own collegiate record for the third time and elevating him to the top of the 2023 world list. The youngest man to reach 71 meters, Alekna resides at No. 18 on the all-time global list.
But it did more than that. It gave Alekna, still just 20 years old, a more clear picture of how he compares with one of the all-time great discus throwers — his father.
Mykolas Alekna
Photo by Jed Jacobsohn
Virgilijus Alekna was twice an Olympic gold medalist (2000 and 2004) and twice a world champion (2003 and 2005). His best mark of 242-5 (73.88) sits at No. 2 on the all-time world list.
That's 10 meters — 34 feet — beyond anything Mykolas had achieved before arriving at Cal. A huge gap.
Now suddenly, Mykolas is just 2.88 meters behind that. To use the American vernacular: 9 feet, 5.4 inches.
“It’s a surprise. Ten feet is not that much,” Mykolas said.
And that seems like something that’s within reach at some point?
“Hopefully,” he said. “It’s kind of crazy. I didn’t expect to get that good that fast. It’s very unexpected.”
Alekna, who intends to remain at Cal long enough to earn his degree, said his father has been very supportive.
“He thinks I’ve done a very good job,” he said. “I don’t think he expected me to do that well, too. It’s a surprise for all of us.”
The one person who is not entirely surprised is Alekna’s throws coach at Cal, Mo Saatara. He saw this coming, just wasn’t sure how soon.
“It was more expectation than surprise,” Saatara said of Mykolas reaching 71 meters. “He’s been working really well. His training has been going great. So it was more a matter of time than, `Omigod, it came out of the blue.’
“It was like a milestone we wanted to get to. There’s a lot more year left, obviously, and a lot more things we’ve got to get done.”
Next on Alekna’s agenda is the Pac-12 Track and Field Championships, which get under way Friday at Walnut, Calif. Alekna is a heavy favorite on Sunday to defend the title he won as a freshman.
The collegiate season runs through the NCAA Championships, June 7-10 at the University of Texas in Austin. The discus will be contested on Friday night, June 9, with Alekna out to avenge his only defeat last year to a college competitor.
“I want to win NCAA championships this year — I lost it last year by two centimeters,” Alekna said. “I wouldn’t say it was a disappointment. It was a good lesson. After that I got more hungry. I wanted to throw further. It made me more motivated.”
But the season doesn’t end with the NCAAs. Alekna — who talks in the video above about his 71-meter throw — expects to throw at a couple high-level international meets, perhaps London or Stockholm, before competing at the Lithuanian national championships. A long season climaxes with the World Championships, Aug. 19 through 27 at Budapest, Hungary. Qualifying in the discus is scheduled for Aug. 19, with the final two days later.
None of this is new to Alekna, who won his national championship last year, threw a personal best at the Stockholm Diamond League meet and won a silver medal — the event’s youngest-ever medal-winner at age 19 — at the World Championships last summer in Eugene, Ore.
“I’m very excited. This is a big year for me,” Alekna said. “Last year I got second at worlds. This year I’ll get to compete in the World Championships again.”
The normal schedule of major international meets — where the World Championships are held every other year, immediately before and after an Olympic year — was disrupted by the pandemic. As a result, Alekna could get the chance to compete at this level four straight years — the Worlds in 2022 and ’23, the Olympics in Paris in ’24 and the Worlds again in ’25.
Asked if he believes he can in a gold medal in Budapest, Alekna didn’t blink. “I hope so. That’s my goal this year. I finished second last year, so hopefully this year I can do better.”
He knows it could be a tougher climb this time because he’s not the teen-age rookie with no outside expectations. “People know I can win a gold medal. They know I’m capable of doing it and I can compete with the best athletes out there,” he said. “It’s definitely different than last year.”
This is where his dad’s experience is helpful. Although his father gives him plenty of space and avoids providing much in the way of technical coaching, he does offer occasional advice, Alekna said.
“He said just focus on yourself, don’t listen to what other people say, and that helped me a lot.”
Saatara has talked with Alekna about U.S. throwing legend Al Oerter, who won four straight Olympic gold medals, starting at the age of 20 in 1956. If Alekna were to win in Paris a year from now, he’d be the youngest man to capture the event at the Olympics since Oerter.
“It was such a long time ago, but there are a lot of good lessons that can be learned from Al Oerter,” Saatara said. “We actually talk about him quite a bit in terms of how to mentally prepare, taking time, not rushing into things, having an orderly approach to things. Oerter was really into those things. All great discus throwers know about Oerter.”
In spite of taking that ordered approach to his training and development, Alekna’s ascent in the sport has been stunning. His father didn’t throw as far as Mykolas did last month until he was 28 years old, which also was his age when he won his first Olympic gold medal at Sydney in 2000.
Virgilijus Alekna at the 2011 World Championships
Photo by Kirby Lee, USA Today
Reading anything into that makes no sense, Alekna and Saatara agree. The circumstances of the careers of father and son are completely different, with Virgilijus training in the post-Soviet era.
“It was different times back then. When my dad was throwing he didn’t get that much support. He didn’t have throwing shoes back then — he used to throw in basketball shoes or something like that,” Mykolas said. “He had a job and was throwing and working at the same time. It was much harder.
“I don’t think we can compare these two things.”
Saatara agrees. “That was kind of the tail end of the Soviet times, and technical development and training, those kind of things, have evolved a lot,” he said. “And his dad obviously evolved a lot during his career also. He was one of the greatest discus throwers of all-time.”
The discus is not a young man’s event and Mykolas might be the greatest young thrower the sport has seen. None of the 17 men ahead of him on the all-time world list achieved their mark anywhere close to as young as he is.
“What he’s doing is pretty unique,” Saatara said. For comparison purposes, he added, “there’s really no other people to look at.”
Cover photo of Cal sophomore Mykolas Alekna
Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo