Emma Sarala’s super talented throw was hit
Emma Sarala set a Swedish junior record already in April with a throw of 56.38 already in April.
17-year-old thought.
But the record was never approved.
– No, the race director refused to sign, says Aki Ross, captain of Emma’s club in Sprovagen.
Emma Sarala grew up in Texas With an American father and a Swedish mother.
But like Mondo, she chose to compete for Sweden.
Last night I gave thanks with a JVM gold in the discus at 56.15.
The seventeen-year-old competes with teammate Daniel Ståhl’s Spårvägen, and it was club captain Åke Ruus, who had to make the jump as Daniel’s coach at WC in Eugene, who greeted her.
– Yes, she got in touch with Anders Axlid, head of the throwing group at the Swedish Athletics Association when she wanted to take part in JEM for Sweden last year, says Aki.
– She needed a Swedish club to compete in Sweden and ended up with Spårvägen. But then I didn’t know who she was. I only saw some results that were good for the age group I competed in.
Now there was a natural connection to Stockholm.
Emma’s older brother Gustav Sarla studies at the Faculty of Economics and lives in Stockholm, and it was also helped that the idol Daniel Stoll compete for the Stockholm club.
– They met once and it was at a training session in Sätra last year. There were both Daniel and Simon. Since then, she’s taken a few training sessions with trainer Vestin Hafsteinson, even though she has her own trainer in the States, says Aki.
You have dual passports
He’s 52-year-old American Adam Setliff, himself an old discus thrower with big credentials.
Setliff had a personal best of 68.95 and was fifth at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and had the same position at WC in Edmonton the following year.
– He helps on a non-profit basis, because Emma is still in high school. She doesn’t start college until next year.
Just like “Mondo” Duplantis, Emma has a Swedish mother and an American father who was born with a dual passport.
– Yes, her mother Anna is from Vänersborg and went to the United States on a golf scholarship to Brigham Young University in Utah. There she met Emma’s father Scott, who was an American football player but also took part in some athletics, says Aki Ross.
Junior record not supported
The result of Sarala winning from the night competitions is valid as a new Swedish junior record. But she threw it further.
– Yes, it was good that she got that throw, considering all the troubles surrounding the previous one, says Aki.
It was in a high school competition in McKinney, Texas, that Emma had the longest throw of the year so far.
– We arranged for her to do a mandatory doping test in order to get registry approval, but the optics equipment was a kind of private construction which meant the race director didn’t want to sign the protocol, says Åke.
This means that the record has not been officially approved, although it remains the longest throw in Swedish statistics.
– But now there shouldn’t be any problems with it 56.15 from Kali. It was also slightly above the old record.
Caisa-Marie Lindfors was 55.98 from Karlstad in 2019.