Cal Track and Field: Mykolas Alekna Named European Rising Star

The Lithuanian won silver at the World champs and gold at the European meet.

Cal’s Mykolas Alekna, who won a silver medal in the discus at the World Championships this summer following his freshman collegiate season, has been named the European Athletics’ 2022 Men’s Rising Star.

Now a sophomore on the Cal track and field team, Alekna had a spectacular debut season with the Bears and outside collegiate competition.

Alekna, who last month turned 20, repeatedly broke the collegiate record in the discus last spring and finished second at the NCAA Championships.

His season-best mark of 229-0 (69.81) came while finishing second at a Diamond League meet at Stockholm, Sweden. That throw was the longest in history by a teen-ager and enabled him to beat reigning Olympic champion Daniel Stahl.

It doesn’t count as the NCAA record because it came outside college competition but lands Alekna at the No. 4 spot on the final 2022 world list. He sits at No. 32 among the all-time world leaders in the discus.

Representing his native Lithuania, Alekna was runner-up at the World Championships at Eugene, Oregon, in a field that included the top four finishers from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. He was the youngest silver medalist at the meet and the second-young athlete to win any medal at the competition.

Competing at Oregon’s Hayward Field, Alekna threw 227 feet, 3 inches (69.27 meters) to give Cal its second World silver medalist, just two days after Camryn Rogers was runner-up in the women’s hammer throw.

One month later, Alekna captured a gold medal at the European Championships, setting a championship meet record of 228-11 inches (69.78) with a throw just one inch off his personal best. He upset a field that included World Champion Kristjan Ceh along with all three medalists from Tokyo.

Alekna certainly got the attention of Ceh, the 23-year-old world champ from Slovenia. “The kid is young and talented,” Meh said this summer. “At his age I was throwing 63 meters. I’m impressed.”

Alekna rewrote Cal’s record book last spring, breaking the 32-year-old school record in the discus in his second collegiate meet. His throw of 218-10 (66.70) at the early season Aztec Invitational in San Diego crushed the Cal standard of 210-11 (64.28), set in 1990 by Ramon Jimenez-Gaona, a future three-time Olympian for Paraguay.

He was the collegiate leader all season, and most recently improved the NCAA record with a throw of 225-6 (68.73) to win the Pac-12 championship.

The only hiccup in Alekna’s season came at the NCAA meet, where he wound up second with a mark of 217-0 (66.15). Virginia’s Claudio Romero, also a freshman, beat him by one inch.

Alekna comes from a family of discus throwers, led by his father, Virgilijus Alekna, who ranks No. 2 on the all-time world list with a best of 257-0 (78.33).

Virgilijus Alekna competed in five Olympics, winning gold in 2000 at Sydney and 2004 at Athens, and participated in 10 World Championships, claiming two more titles at that event.

Elina Tzengko, 19, of Greece was the women’s Rising Star winner after capturing gold in the javelin at the European Championships. She and Alekna were the youngest winners in meet history in their respective events.

Femke Bol of the Netherlands, Sweden’s Armand Duplantis and Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen were crowned European Athletes of the Year at the Golden Tracks award ceremony at Tallinn, Estonia last Saturday.

Bol won the women’s 400 meters, the 400 hurdles and anchored the winning 4x400 relay at the World Championships. Duplantis and Ingebrigtsen were co-winners of the men’s award.

Duplantis broke the world record in the pole vault three times, including at the Worlds in Eugene, while Ingebrigtsen set a world mark in the indoor 1,500, captured silver in the 1,500 and gold in the 5,000 at the World Championships and won the same two events at the European meet.

Cover photo of Mykolas Alekna by Kirby Lee, USA Today

Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo