Ferenc Paragi

Who is Ferenc Paragi?

Ferenc Paragi is a Hungarian athlete who, on April 23, 1980, established a world record of 96.72 in the javelin throw, eclipsing the global standard set by fellow countryman Miklós Németh at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal.

This effort added more than two meters to the previous world record, fueling discussion and speculation regarding the likelihood of alterations to the javelin's design and flight characteristics. Proposed changes would finally take effect in 1986, following another two sizable improvements to the javelin world record; the first coming in 1983, when Tom Petranoff, then of the United States, added precisely three meters to Paragi's mark, and the other in 1984, when East German Uwe Hohn launched the 800 gram implement to 104.80 meters.

Hohn's mark only came after the new design had already been officially proposed, and contrary to a popular myth had nothing to do with the change. Indeed, the primary reason for the change was to get rid of the then frequent flat or ambiguous landings, which often made it hard to assess if a throw should be declared legal, most famously in the high-profile case at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow where the eventual winner Dainis Kūla only progressed to the last three rounds with an apparently flat throw. Ambiguous landings were also much more difficult to measure accurately, compared to clearly legal ones where the javelin would stick in the ground at the landing spot.