Yury Shayunou held a relatively low profile in his younger years, considering that the leader of the youth world rankings in 2004 threw almost 9½ meters farther. With a personal best of 73,86 meters with the 5 kg implement, Yury Shayunou was 8th in the IAAF world rankings in 2004.^[2] At the age of 18, being a junior, Yury Shayunou threw the 6 kg implement 74,78 meters claiming the bronze medal at the 2005 European Athletics Junior Championships.^[3] Yury Shayunou had his breakthrough on July 15, 2007, when he won the 2007 European Athletics U23 Championships.^[4] After a fourth place at the 2006 World Junior Championships in Athletics,^[5] he had now surpassed every opponent under 23 years of age in the world.^[6] His result was 74,92 meters with the 7,26 kg implement.^[4] In 2009 Yury Shayunou won the Belarusian national championship, in the absence of Ivan Tikhon and Vadim Devyatovskiy, with 78.76 meters.^[7] He later won the 2009 world student games with 76,92 meters^[8] and the 2009 European Athletics U23 Championships with 78,16 meters.^[9] Yury Shayunou also attended the 2009 World Championships in Athletics^[10] in which he went in as second in the world rankings after Hungarian Krísztian Párs.^[11] Though, he only finished 12th in the qualifications with a performance of 71,37 followed by two fouls^[12] which would not be good enough to grab a position among the 12 best in any of the qualifying groups.