Poland's Anita Wlodarczyk has become the first woman to throw the hammer further than 80m ©Getty Images

Anita Wlodarczyk has become the first woman to throw the hammer further than 80 metres as she recorded 81.08m at the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial Throws Festival in Cetniewo, adding exactly 1.5m to the mark she set last year in Berlin.

"I was waiting for this moment so long - this is an unbelievable feeling to be the first woman to throw over 80m," said Poland’s 29-year-old world and Olympic silver medallist.

"I’m so happy especially that I have done it during competition which was dedicated to my friend Kamila Skolimowska.

"I finally fulfilled my dream."

The meeting in the Gdańsk region, part of the International Association of Athletics Federations’ (IAAF) Hammer Throw Challenge, commemorates the Pole who became the youngest Olympic hammer champion at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, aged 17, and who died unexpectedly in 2009 while training in Portugal.

Wlodarczyk opened with a foul but soon made amends in the second round, sending her implement way beyond the 80m line.

She added that she knew she had broken her world record as soon as the hammer landed, but waited for confirmation via the scoreboard.

Poland’s Anita Wlodarczyk will go to this month's World Championships in Beijing as favourite for gold after becoming the first woman to throw the hammer more than 80 metres
Poland’s Anita Wlodarczyk will go to this month's World Championships in Beijing as favourite for gold after becoming the first woman to throw the hammer more than 80 metres ©Getty Images

After all the excitement of breaking the world record in the early stages of the competition, Wlodarczyk regained her composure to complete a consistent series with throws of 79.07m, 78.53m, 76.61m and 77.83m.

Wlodarczyk still has one more IAAF Hammer Throw Challenge meeting - the Kusocinski Memorial on August 9 in Szczecin - before the World Championships, due to take place from August 22 to 30 in Beijing, where she will clearly be an overwhelming favourite to add another gold to the one she won in Berlin six years ago.

On what was a good day for the host nation’s throwers, world champion Pawel Fajdek won the men’s hammer with 82.07m, once again comfortably defeating Hungarian Olympic champion Krisztián Pars, who finished second with a season’s best of 79.91m.

Two days after winning at the IAAF Diamond League meeting in Stockholm, Piotr Malachowski threw 68.29m in the discus, the best effort of 2015 so far.

Double Olympic champion Tomasz Majewski was an easy winner of the shot, throwing 20.78m.