margin at the DN Galan meet in Stockholm. Three days later he improved his season best to 84.45 metres at the London Grand Prix at Crystal Palace. Even though several throwers, including Nilsen, still towered above Thorkildsen on the world list, the Olympic javelin contest was regarded as widely open – "one of the most open finals in Olympic history", according to the IAAF Olympic coverage. Thorkildsen threw 81.74 m in the qualification round, barely earning a mention in the event report as he safely passed the automatic qualifier mark of 81 metres to go through to the final. Breaux Greer won the qualification with 87.25 m, but left the stadium in a limping state. In the javelin final held two days later, Thorkildsen opened with an 84.82 m release which saw him ranked third at the end of the first round. Vadims Vasiļevskis of Latvia had thrown a personal best of 84.95 m to earn a surprising lead ahead of reigning World champion Sergey Makarov. In the second round Thorkildsen threw a personal best of 86.50 metres. As neither Aleksandr Ivanov, Greer nor anyone else managed to beat this, Thorkildsen won a surprising Olympic gold medal with Vasiļevskis and Makarov staying in place to take the silver and bronze medals respectively. Thorkildsen became the second Norwegian man to win the Olympic gold medal in javelin throw, after Egil Danielsen in 1956. Commenting on his win, Thorkildsen described the feeling as "completely insane". A second place behind Breaux Greer at the World Athletics Final in Monte Carlo rounded off the season. 2005 The most important event of 2005 was the World Championships. The preparations for this event looked promising for Thorkildsen as he improved his personal best to 86.82 metres in Kuortane in June, beating the Norwegian record of Pål Arne Fagernes. Tero Pitkämäki from Finland, who achieved a world leading result of 91.53 metres in the same competition, seemed a likely contender for the world champion title. In July, When Thorkildsen further improved his national record to 87.66 metres at the Bislett Games, reigning world champion Sergey Makarov had already thrown 90.33 metres two weeks earlier at the Russian Championships in Tula. Going into the World Championships, Pitkämäki was still in first place on the world top list ahead of Makarov and Thorkildsen, who in turn was ahead of Breaux Greer by one centimetre. In the qualification round at