- Virgilijus Alekna
Virgilijus Alekna is a famous
Lithuania n athlete. He was born on14 February 1972 inTerpeikiai ,Lithuania , near the town ofKupiškis .Career
Alekna has so far won two gold medals in the
Summer Olympics , both in thediscus throw . The first was in the 2000 and the second in 2004. Alekna's performance at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics was less successful, winning him the bronze medal at his fourth attempt of 67.79 m. In 2007, he was appointed asUNESCO Champion for Sport. His personal record is 73.88meters (242 ft 4½ in), surpassed only by the world record (74.08 m.).Alekna was awarded the title of the Athlete of the Year for 2000 by
Track and Field News . He was also awarded theOrder of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas by the government of Lithuania. Since 1995 Alekna has served as a bodyguard of the Lithuanian Prime Minister.He is married to former long jumper Kristina Sablovskytė-Aleknienė and has two young sons named Martynas and Mykolas.
At a height of 2.00 m (6 ft 7 in), Alekna has an abnormally long wingspan, measured 2.22m (7 ft 3.5 in), which is useful for discus throwing. He can make fingerprints on windows of two opposite sides of a bus simultaneously. [ [http://www.iaaf.org/news/Kind=2/newsId=14438.html IAAF] ]
During the 2007 World Championship Virgilijus Alekna competed with an injury. Having sustained the sustained the injury on 20 August, he competed in the World Championship's qualification on 28 August lt icon Eglė Šilinskaitė. [http://www.lrytas.lt/?data=20070829&id=spo29_a1070829&sk_id=99&view=2 Nenugalimąjį metiką įveikė kojos trauma (Unbeatable thrower was defeat by leg injury)] . Retrieved on 2007-08-29] and, as a result, suffered a defeat, which broke his 37 victories in a row over the past two years.
Notes
External links
*iaaf name|id=9502|name=Virgilijus Alekna
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
