Paris Olympics Throws Preview: Part 1

Ryan Crouser. Photo courtesy of USATF.

Men’s Shot Final 

August 3

In 2015, Joe Kovacs established himself as the planet’s best shot putter (male version) by launching a massive 22.56m PB at the Monaco Diamond League meeting. That throw moved him to eighth on the all time list, with the seven gents ahead of him having achieved their marks between 1975 and 1990 when…well, you know. 

Later that summer, Joe won his first international medal–a gold at the Worlds in Beijing–and at the age of 26 seemed primed to establish himself as the greatest shot putter of the drug-testing era, and maybe the greatest of any era.

Joe Kovacs. Photo courtesy of Diamond League AG.

In the years since, Joe has more than fulfilled the promise he showed during that breakout season, producing historically huge throws in some of the biggest comps, including 22.91m at the Doha Worlds and 22.65m at the Tokyo Olympics. He also became the second man during the current not-so-easy-to-cheat era to surpass 23 meters. 

But if you are reading this article, you know who the first guy was, and therein lies the story heading into Paris.

As great as Joe has been, Ryan Crouser has usually been better.

Since 2016, Crouser has won two Olympics, two Outdoor Worlds, one Indoor Worlds and seven national titles, often at Joe’s expense. When Joe went 22.65m in Tokyo, Crouser hit 23.30m. When Joe reached 22.87m at the 2022 US Championships and 22.89m three weeks later at the World Championships, Crouser topped him at both with throws of 23.12m and 22.94m.

At the Triton Invitational in 2015, Joe launched a warmup throw reportedly in the 23.75m range, which got folks thinking that Randy Barnes’ 23.12m World Record, set in 1990, was finally going to come off the books. Folks were right, but it was Crouser not Kovacs who leapfrogged Barnes by reaching 23.37m at the 2021 Trials. And when Joe made his own World Record bid with a 23.23m bomb at the 2022 Diamond League Final, Crouser responded the following spring by taking the mark out to 23.56m.

Long story short, after a decade of eating Crouser’s dust (a big exception being the historic Doha comp) the Paris Olympics offer Joe Kovacs one final opportunity to put himself back into consideration as the greatest putter of all time. All he has to do is break the World Record and win the gold medal. 

Which is not such a crazy notion. People who ought to know have said that Joe was in World Record shape when he threw 22.43m at the Trials but got a little too excited and lost his rhythm. The stakes will be much higher in Paris, so keeping his chill could be très difficile. Might I suggest a pre-comp plate of crêpes? After all, they’re just thin pancakes. 

But even if Joe does bang out a new record, what are the odds it lasts more than a round or two? Yes, Crouser missed a ton of training this spring while recuperating from elbow and pec injuries, but you may recall that in 2023, after three weeks of inactivity due to blood clots in his leg, he hobbled into Budapest and went 23.51m.

There is also the question of this Leonardo Fabbri fellow, the twenty-seven-year-old Italian who took silver in Budapest with his first-ever 22-meter throw. So far in 2024, he has surpassed 22 meters in twelve different comps. On six occasions, he has gone 22.50m or better.  

Leonardo Fabbri. Photo courtesy of Diamond League AG.

That kind of consistency suggests that Kovacs and Crouser aren’t the only ones capable of breaking the World Record. 

Beyond that Fearsome Threesome, only a few guys strike me as having the pop to get near the podium. Payton Otterdahl has gone 22m+ in seven of nine comps this year and likely will again in Paris.

Payton Otterdahl. Photo courtesy of USATF.

In 2022 and 2023, Chuk Enekwechi was plagued by sciatic nerve issues which, based on the 21.91m PB he launched in May, appear to be resolved. He’s been a warrior on the tour for years, a great guy and tough competitor, with a physique that would make a Greek statue jealous. It would be great to see him contend, though it will take a big PB to get in the mix.

Chuk Enekwechi. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.

Sometimes Mother Nature works in strange ways. For example, Filip Mihaljević and I were both born on July 31st, yet he grew up to be European champion and World Indoor bronze medalist while I struggle to dunk on an eight-foot basketball hoop. One similarity we share to this day is that neither of us has made an Olympic shot put final. That will change this weekend, and as with Chuk it would be great to see a guy who has been such a great ambassador for the sport get in the hunt for a medal.

Filip Mihaljević. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.

Finally, I’m told that Zane Weir, my favorite skinny person, has been training superbly after overcoming a sprained ankle. The next step is regaining the confidence to unleash the beast in competition. Luckily, Zane has a knack for performing well under pressure. With Kovacs, Crouser, and Fabbri in the field, there will be plenty of it.

Zane Weir. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.

Men’s Hammer Final

August 4

Last year, Ethan Katzberg became my second-favorite skinny person when he ambled into Budapest and put an end to Polish dominance in the men’s hammer. I have nothing against the Poles and their awe-inspiring skill and consistency, but how could you not root for a guy who, when the camera showed him between throws, looked like a teenager patiently waiting for his mom to pick him up from the skate park?

Ethan Katzberg . Photo courtesy of Dylan Armstrong.

Can he win again in Paris, or might the Worlds have been a one-off, fluky kind of thing?

Well, Ethan’s season’s best of 84.38m is 3 meters better than anyone else in 2024, so…yes, he’s going to win. He might even make a run at Sergey Litvinov’s 84.80m Olympic record. And before you accuse me of being an overly optimistic hoser, consider this:

Prior to Budapest, Ethan had hit 80 meters a total of zero times then went 81.25m for the win. This year, he’s been over 80 meters on seven occasions. Qualification should be stress free for him, and he can open the final with a middling distance and still put himself in the top eight. That kind of security gives a fella room to relax and swing for the fences.

The contenders for silver and bronze will include Wojciech Nowicki, the defending Olympic champ who is not so much skinny as mountainous. At 35, Wojciech’s career is nearing its end, and he’s only hit 80 meters once this year, but that came in round six at the European Championships and got him the win. He is seasoned and unflappable in the clutch, qualities which will serve him well in a comp where places two through five might be separated by half a meter.

Bence Halász, Wojciech Nowicki, and Mykhaylo Kokhan . Photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Twenty-six-year old Bence Halász took the bronze in Budapest, and was on the receiving end of Nowicki’s sixth-round haymaker this year in Rome, so he’s battle-tested. He also has developed the charming habit of throwing his best when it counts the most. All four of his lifetime comps over 80 meters have come in major championship finals. 

Ukraine’s Mykhaylo Kokhan is another strong podium candidate. He placed fourth in Tokyo, as a twenty-year-old, and has been over 80 meters on four occasions this year, including 80.18m in Rome. How Ukrainian athletes like Mykhaylo have been able to keep it together while their country has been brutalized by the Russians is a mystery to me, but every Ukrainian medal at these Games will be an “up yours” to Putin, so I am hoping he goes big.

And let’s not forget about five-time World Champ Pawel Fajdek who looks like he should be commanding a motorcycle gang in rural Montana. He’d surely like to add a tenth major championships medal to a haul that places him among the all time greats. At thirty-five, he lacks some of his youthful pop and has only gone 80 meters twice in two years, but old man strength and the ability to make people wet themselves with a single glance cannot be discounted.

Pawel Fajdek. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.

Yann Chaussinand has hit 79+ on two occasions this year, and will be the only top competitor who can, if need be, cuss in French. At every Olympic Games, a few members of the host squad produce sensational performances. Might Yann come up with something to thrill the home crowd in Paris? Oui, vraiment!

Finally, the German champion Merlin Hummel hit an impressive 79.25m PB in lousy conditions at the European Championships, and at twenty-two might be young and inexperienced enough not to realize that he should be overwhelmed by his first Olympics.

Women’s Discus Final

August 5

Val Allman dominated in Tokyo and has only gotten better since. So far this season, she is undefeated in nine comps including four Diamond League meetings. She threw 69.80m and 69.86m on consecutive weekends in China, and 70.89m and 70.73m on separate days at the Trials. Any of those distances would likely win in Paris.

Val Allman. Photo courtesy of USATF.

I say “likely” rather than “definitely” because though none of Val’s competitors has come close to matching her consistent excellence this year, she…they…well…did you watch the last two World Championships?  

In 2022, Bin Feng produced a 69.12m shock-a-roonie to snag the gold medal. That was a 3-meter PB, and I have since adopted her name as a verb, as in “I was up by two on my grandson in driveway basketball when he Bin Fenged me with a 3-pointer from behind the minivan.”

Bin Feng. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.

Then last year in Budapest, Lagi Tausaga “Bin Fenged” both Val and Bin Feng with a 4-meter PB 

But I don’t see that happening in Paris. Lagi will not be present after fouling three times in qualification at the Trials.

In eight comps this year, Bin Feng has averaged a healthy 66.29m, but it’s going to take 70m+ to top Val and she’s not going to get there.

Sandra Elkasević, the best there ever was, will bring the heat to her final Olympics, but she’s not hitting 70 meters either. 

Sandra Elkasević. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.

Nor will Jorinde Van Klinken, who will be throwing the shot in Paris as well. She was sensational at the European Championships in spite of a Day 1 schedule that had her competing in the shot qualification, disc qualification and shot final in the span of twelve hours.

Jorinde somehow survived, and took silver in the shot that evening, then silver again in the disc on Day 2 with a toss of 65.99m on legs that must have felt like overcooked pasta. A month later she reached 67.23m at the Paris Diamond League meeting, which may well foreshadow a big performance at the Games. Silver or bronze would be a huge step forward in her career, and could signal the start of an intriguing rivalry with Val.

Another up-and-comer worth noting is freshly-minted Swedish record holder Vanessa Kamga. Vanessa won’t get on the podium, but she’s a good bet for the top eight and it is really fun to root for her because she seems to take great joy from throwing the discus–which is why we’re here, non? 

Women’s Hammer Final

August 6

Father Time will have a say in this one. 

Camryn Rogers, twenty-five years old and the defending World Champion, has surpassed 75 meters in five of six comps this year with a season’s best of 77.76m, which she threw on two occasions. Rogers is sure to throw 77m+ in Paris, and there’s only one competitor who–in 2024 at least–has shown the kind of firepower necessary to match her. 

Camryn Rogers. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.

That would be 2019 World Champion DeAnna Price, who has gone 75 meters or better five times this season including two comps over 77. I’m told that DeAnna dropped one in the 78-meter range during warmups at the Trials, which suggests she’s close to top form after several injury-plagued years. 

But the effort she put into that warm up throw caused her back to spazz, and her best toss in the final was 74.52m.  At thirty-one, DeAnna is by no means old, but the type of training required of a world class hammer thrower takes a toll.

DeAnna Price. Photo courtesy of USATF.

If she can stay healthy through qualification and all six throws in the final, she can go toe-to-toe with Rogers and also, per an agreement with her husband/coach JC Lambert become dog eligible. The couple currently owns two, but JC has promised another if DeAnna can medal. And people think these athletes are in it for the money.

If all goes well and DeAnna and Camryn slug it out for gold and silver, the third spot on the podium will be available to anyone who can muster a 75- meter throw. Aside from Rogers and Price there will be five or six ladies capable of reaching that mark, most notably Sara Fantini, who took gold in front of the home crowd in Rome. 

Anita Włodarczyk, the three-time Olympic champ, has been hovering in the 71-72 meter range all season, robbed of her pop by years of hard training and injuries, including an ankle sprain suffered while celebrating a World Record throw in 2009, and a leg injury sustained while stomping a man she caught trying to steal her car in 2022. I don’t think she’ll reach the podium in Paris, but if she somehow produces a big one, steer clear if she heads your way for a celebratory hug.

Anita Włodarczyk. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.

My pick for bronze is Annette Echikunwoke who came out on top in a grueling comp at the Trials which saw 2022 World Champ Brooke Andersen and Budapest silver medalist Janee’ Kassanavoid fail to make the team.  That kind of toughness will serve her well in Paris.

Annette Echikunwoke. Photo courtesy of USATF.

Daniel Ståhl Books Available

With the Olympics upon us, two books by Vésteinn Hafsteinsson and moi, provide great insight into what it took to get the 2021 discus gold medalist Daniel Ståhl to the top of the podium in Tokyo.

The first, Training for Gold: The Plan that made Daniel Ståhl an Olympic Champion details the training program that Vésteinn devised for Daniel. During a thirty-year career as one of the greatest throws coaches ever, Vésteinn came up with an approach to training that those interested in lifting and throwing will find fascinating.

The second book, Gold: The Olympic Journey of Daniel Ståhl and Vésteinn Hafsteinsson, tells the inside story of how Daniel went from hockey player to Olympic discus champion in a ten-year span. This one will appeal to throws lovers and also to more general readers.

Both are available on Amazon and other outlets.

Check out the Throw Big Throw Far Podcasts!

I recently joined up with podcast meister Joe Frontier and all time great shot putter Darrell Hill for a series of Olympic preview podcasts. Darrell will be in the booth when field event qualification rounds are shown on NBC Peacock, and you’ll see why NBC hired him as you listen to these episodes. You can find them through Apple Podcasts and other outlets.


6/7/2024 Update from the European Championships

Women’s Shot Qualification

Ok, I missed it. My daughter flew in this morning, and I wasn’t going to ask her to figure out how to get from the airport to the hotel her first time in Rome. So the ladies threw the shot while I was on the train.

Sweden’s Fanny Roos was the leading qualifier, though, with a toss of 18.70m. Which was awesome to see. Fanny had a breakout year in 2021 when she took European Indoor silver and finished seventh at the Olympics. She made the Worlds final in 2022 and took another European Indoor medal in 2023, but has struggled since the retirement of her longtime coach, Vésteinn Hafsteinsson, seemed to set her adrift, though she landed with Staffan Jönsson, who had done a remarkable job rejuvenating the career of Daniel Ståhl.

It can be a funny thing switching coaches. Of Vésteinn’s old group, Fanny and Simon Pettersson have struggled—Simon did not advance in the men’s disc today—while Daniel has thrived and shot putter Marcus Thomsen is once again thriving after a difficult 2023 campaign.

Anyway, it would be awesome to see Fanny announce her return to form by snagging her first outdoor European Champs medal.

Look to Jessica Schilder and Yemisi Ogunleye, who both went one-and-done in qualification—a wise move since the final is tonight—to challenge for podium spots.

Men’s Disc Qualification

I missed the A group, but is anyone surprised that Mykolas Alekna went 67.50m on his first throw? It was 9:30 in the morning, hotter than hell in a mostly empty stadium, but…who cares? Look for him to go 70m tonight.

Kristjan did not reach the auto mark but felt comfortable enough with his 65.64m opener that he passed his second and third attempts.

At his size, Daniel is probably the last guy who wanted to be out there throwing in the heat with the final just a few hours away—that’s right, the men’s disc final is also tonight—and it showed, He went 69.01m, 63.79m, foul, then rolled through the mixed zone looking like an extremely grouchy bulldozer.

Vikings are tough you-know-whaters, though, so don’t be surprised to see him on the medal stand tonight.

The highlight for me this morning was seeing Mika Sosna make the final in his first ever senior Championships. I had to haul some ass to get there on my time—a sight which some innocent pedestrians I rumbled past might never be able to unsee. But it was worth it, as he sneaked in at twelfth. And Mika is no shrinking violet. He came up big at Throw Town in April when surrounded by some of the world’s best, so look for him to make the top 8 tonight.

Women’s Disc Qualification

Sandra is going for her 7th European title, and God help anyone who gets in her way. Full disclosure, she looked off balance during warmups and on her first attempt, and I was actually wondering if her reign might end not with a bang but with a really crappy performance in qualification. What a foolish man I am. She was still off balance in round two but hit 65.62m to lead all qualifiers.

When Marike Steinacker stepped in for her third throw, she was the only German discus thrower of either gender who had not secured a place in the final. No pressure there. She came through with a toss of 63.30m, and look for her to contend with Sandra, Shanice Craft—winner of three previous Euro bronzes—and Jorinde Van Klinken—the hardest working woman in show business (Instead of going home and resting between this morning’s shot qualification and tonight’s final, made time in her busy schedule to toss an SB of 65.12m in Group A) to join Sandra on the podium.

Dan McQuaid

Mac Wilkins throws webinar coming April 15th!

A press release from Mac Wilkins:

Mac Wilkins’ Introductory “Learn By Watching”    

a Practical Application Webinar 

Shot Put & Discus       Coaches & Throwers      All Levels of Development

We have all sat through endless presentations at clinics, listening to dry, boring talks about the theory of throwing technique or some special new drill.  BUT how can you Apply this to your sophomore thrower who just came out from basketball? 

What’s a Practical Application of all this theory that will work for you AND your thrower?

Monday April 15, 2024  –  Two Sessions  –  6:00 pm Eastern & 6:00 pm Pacific

SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY PRICING

Clinic Attendance Free:    –    Sign up for one or both        

Video Analysis –  Limit Four Throwers each Session  $35       

The first four throwers accepted per session will be the subjects of Mac’s Learn by Watching.

Select the session(s) you prefer from these options

Click Here    to Register for the Webinar –  6:00 pm Eastern time 

Click Here    to Register for the Analysis –  6:00 pm Eastern time 

Click Here    to Register for the Webinar –  6:00 pm Pacific time 

Click Here    to Register for the Analysis –  6:00 pm Pacific time 

Agenda:– 60 minutes or less

  • Key Technical Point Discussion
    • 10-12 minutes of the Basic Checklist Points to watch for during the season
    • Basic Points to watch for that you can have your athletes use to coach themselves.
  • Learn By Watching  
    • Mac will analyze the throws of four throwers providing live Q&A 
  • Summary
    • Mac will summarize and engage in live Q&A with the group.
    • There will be a replay available of the session for those in attendance.
  • Survey
    • How can I better share my passion for the shot and discuss with you?

The Monday Morning Meathead for the week of March 25

Shelby Frank and Coach Peter Miller showing off her new PB. Photo courtesy of Coach Miller.

Gophers got game

Fresh off a second-place finish in the weight at the NCAA Indoor Championships, Minnesota’s Shelby Frank opened her outdoor campaign with strong showings in the hammer and disc at the Clyde Hart Classic in Waco, Texas.

Gopher throws coach Peter Miller says the hammer is Shelby’s “least favorite” event in spite of the potential she displayed while producing a PB of 65.83m during a redshirt 2023 season. This winter, Frank used a wind and four turns in the weight to try to get more carryover into the hammer, and a 62.78m toss at the Clyde indicates she might be on the right track.

But though she hopes to contend for big Big Ten points in the ball and chain, the discus is, in Coach Miller’s words, “Shelby’s baby.”  And the little bundle of joy seems to be developing quite well! Shelby switched from a fixed feet to full-reverse thrower in 2023 and pushed her PB to 59.07m in the process. She also notched her second consecutive fifth-place finish at the USATF Championships and earned a silver medal at the U23 NACACs in Costa Rica, a pleasant surprise as it was the first time Shelby had visited a foreign country other than Canada (which doesn’t even seem like a foreign country except that everyone is polite there and a “loonie” is a dollar and not a parent raising their hand at a school board meeting).

After a solid off-season of training, Shelby launched a 59.10m bomb at an indoor discus comp on campus in February, then surpassed it last weekend in Waco as part of a very solid series: 56.16m, Foul, 59.69m, 58.17m, 58.98m, 58.13m.

Her goals for 2024? According to Coach Miller, Shelby would like to win her first Big Ten discus title and improve upon her best NCAA finish, which was 6th in 2022. As this is an Olympic year, she’d also like to improve on those fifth-place USATF finishes. Is a spot on the podium and the plane to Paris a possibility? “Shelby,” says Miller, “is physically stronger and faster than she was a year ago. As long as she shows up with a good attitude, she will be tough to beat.”

The same might be said of Gopher freshman Angleos Mantzouranis, whom Coach Miller describes as “an immensely powerful young man” who “looks like an NFL fullback in his lower body.”

Miller says that Mantzouranis’s strength sometimes interferes with his ability to make technical adjustments. “Luckily,” he explained, “I teach the hammer in a similar way to Angelos’s coach back in Greece, Alex Papadimitriou, so that helps.”

Angelos Mantzouranis and Coach Miller at the Clyde. Photo courtesy of Coach Miller.

It might be best that Miller and Papadimitriou share mentorship of Angelos, as his recent ups and downs might be too much for a single nervous system to withstand. Last summer, for example, he dropped a 77.16m one-and-done bomb with the 6-kilo implement during qualification at the European U20 Championships, then No-Marked in the final after pulling an 80-meter effort wide left, banging one off the cage on the right, and barely toe-fouling a 78-meter toss which would have put him on the podium.. 

In his collegiate debut on March 15th at the Hurricane Invitational, Angelos opened at 70.27m but followed up with five consecutive fouls. He fouled again in rounds one and two at the Clyde, which had Miller wondering if he might be “the worst hammer coach in the NCAA.”

But one thing Angelos does not do is back off when the chips are down, and he ended up putting together a nice series on Friday that included PB’s of 73.50m and 73.85m. Miller says they, “had a good conversation after the meet about the problem of him thinking one thing during a competition and me cueing him on another. We know we have to be on the same page going forward.”

Also sharing space on that page is 2023 NCAA hammer runner-up Kostas Zaltos, who like Angelos, hails from Greece. 

The Peloponnesian pipeline first opened for Miller shortly after he took over the men’s program at Minnesota. In the spring of 2019, he was going through some Facebook messages when he noticed one from Kostas saying he’d be throwing at the upcoming European U20 Championships in Sweden.

It just so happened that Miller was planning to attend that comp, and while there he got to meet Kostas and see him throw. “Personality-wise,” Miller recalls, “we connected right away. He fouled out of the competition, but that was probably for the best because it might have kept other schools from noticing him.”

Kostas arrived on campus in January of 2020 and showed off his pop by launching the weight 20.92m before the season was shut down by Covid. As a foreign student, Kostas was required to return to Greece, and while he was gone, the University of Minnesota terminated the men’s track program. 

He was set to transfer when the Board of Regents agreed to restore outdoor track only. “Kostas was actually happy about that,” says Miller. “He hated throwing the weight.”

With a European and Olympic Championships this summer, Kostas is taking a redshirt year to focus on making the Greek national squad. The PB 76.33m he hit at the 2023 NCAAs has him just under the 76.50m qualifying mark for Europeans, and within shouting distance of the 78.20m Olympic standard as well.

He is currently training with Miller in Minneapolis, and will compete two or three times in the US before heading home to Greece for the summer. Miller will continue to write Kostas’s training programs and to coach him as best he can over Zoom. Next year, Kostas will be back competing for U of M where he will join Shelby, Angelos, and others on what promises to be a powerful Gophers throws squad. 

Book update

Make that “books.”

Training for Gold: The Plan that made Daniel Ståhl Olympic Champion is available on Amazon in paperback and as an eBook.

Cover photo courtesy of Arwid Koskinen

Training for Gold details the 2020-2021 training plan used by Daniel and his coach Vésteinn Hafsteinsson. Anyone interested in the art of training, of balancing lifting with technique work, balancing hard work with rest, avoiding injury, and peaking when it counts, will find valuable information here from one of the great throwing coaches of all time.

In addition, we are a week or two away from releasing our second book about Vésteinn and Daniel…

Gold: The Olympic Journey of Daniel Ståhl and Vésteinn Hafsteinsson is an inside look at their ten-year partnership which resulted in World Championship and Olympic gold.

As I said, this baby will be out soon. Stay tuned!

Throwdown at Throw Town

In a preview of big throws to come at the upcoming 2024 Oklahoma Throws Series World Invitational (April 12-14), the discs were flying this past weekend at Throw Town Ramona.

On Saturday, the 23rd, UCLA commit Julia Tunks bashed a PB 59.84m to extend her Canadian U20 and U23 records.

In the men’s comp, 2022 US champion Andrew Evans broke 67 meters for the first time to finish ahead of 2022 World Championships finalist Alex Rose.

Alex Rose opened his 2024 season at Throw Town. Photo courtesy of Caleb Seal.

The following day, Tunks went 58.92m, while 2023 Pan Am U20 bronze medalist and future Kansas Jayhawk Maddie Fey hit 53.52m. Fey’s future teammate at Kansas, Kat Meacham, went 49.89m, while outstanding high school junior Taylor Wiseman notched a 50.23m PB and future Clemson Tiger, Christina Barnett pushed her all time best to 47.35m.

Photo Courtesy of Caleb Seal.

Meanwhile, Evans once again took advantage of the propitious Oklahoma winds in extending his PB to 67.50m. He was again followed by Rose, who notched an early season’s best of 66.57m.

The lineup for the World Invitational promises to be veeeery interesting. More on that soon!

The Monthly Meathead for March, 2024

Jalani Davis won the NCAA weight toss and finished 3rd in the shot.
Photo courtesy of Ole Miss.

36 the hard way

The Ole’ Miss throws squad, led by the venerable John Smith and his protege Dempsey McGuigan, finished the indoor season with a flourish, sweeping the weight and shot at the SEC Championships, then adding two more individual NCAA titles to Smith’s voluminous resume. 

The fun began in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on February 23rd when Jalani Davis launched the weight a PB 25.09m to break the meeting record she set in 2023. Teammate Jasmine Mitchell came in second with a toss of 23.73m. 

In the men’s weight, sophomore Tarik Robinson-O’Hagan took the title by dropping three of his six attempts past the 23-meter line, including a best of 23.55m. Four of Tarik’s throws would have been good enough to put him ahead of second-placer Ruben Banks of Alabama, who finished with a top toss of 22.54m.

With Davis and Robinson-O’Hagan delivering early knockouts, the weight comps lacked drama. It was a different story in the shot.

At the 2023 SECs Florida’s Alida Van Daalen snatched the title from Davis with a sixth-round PB of 18.66m. Davis also PB’d in that comp, with a toss of 18.43m, which foreshadowed her stunning performance at the USATF Outdoor Champions where she would hit 18.62m to win a spot on the US team for Budapest.

This year, Van Daalen had the lead going into round five with a best of 18.25m. Davis, meanwhile, sat in eighth place with a scorecard that read: 15.56m, 16.08m, Foul, Foul.

That kind of series at a championship meet can make a coach regret his choice of career, but Smith never lost faith that Davis would hit the big one.

“Jalani,” he explained, “generates a lot of power. But sometimes she has trouble getting left at the back and sometimes she forgets to get up out of the middle, so she plows everything forward and can’t keep it in. But if she gets out of the back early and gets up at the finish, it’s gone. I’ve seen her struggle then put it together and go ten feet farther.”

That’s essentially what happened on her fifth throw in Fayetteville, when Davis launched a new indoor PB of 18.61m to take the lead.

To her credit, Van Daalen produced her best throw of the day in round six, but still finished two centimeters shy of Davis.  

John Smith, Tarik Robinson-O’Hagan, Ole Miss head coach Connie Price-Smith, Jalani Davis, and Dempsey McGuigan. Photo courtesy of Ole Miss.

Going into the SECs, Smith thought Robinson-O’Hagan was in shape to throw 20 meters. It turned out he needed to do just that to hold off a strong field which included Roje Stona of Arkansas, John Meyer of LSU, and Dylan Targgart of South Carolina. 

Stona (19.80m) and Meyer (19.78m) held the top two spots after three rounds, with Robinson-O’Hagan (19.59m) and Targgart (19.33m) at their heels. 

The bombs dropped in round five. First, Florida’s Kai Chang busted a 19.36m PB which, back in the day, might have put him in contention. Just for fun, I looked up the 2014 SEC Indoor results, and the winner that year, Kentucky’s Brad Szypka, finished with a best of 19.47m. Alas, those days are long gone, and Chang’s chuck would lift him no higher than fifth. 

Robinson-O’Hagan stepped in two throws later and smashed 20.38m, an all time PB and his second career toss over the 20-meter line. 

“He got himself turned in the middle better on that one,” explained Smith. “And he really attacked through his right side at the front.”

Meyer answered with 19.84m to briefly jump Stona, but the big Jamaican–a remarkable athlete who holds a discus PB of 68.64m– replied with a 19.94m SB. (Note: A few days after SECs, Stona wowed the football world by ripping off a 4.69 40-yard dash at Arkansas’ pro day.)

Targgart found his form a round later and launched a PB of 19.99m to vault into second. But, in the end, Robinson-O’Hagan’s 20.38m held up for the win, giving Ole Miss the second throws sweep in SEC Indoor history.

The NCAA Championships were held in Boston two weeks later, at a facility called “The Track at New Balance,” whatever that means. Unfortunately for the throwers competing there, the ring at the Track at New Balance–try saying it slowly, in your best announcer’s voice–was notoriously slick.

Smith credits Dempsey–who is Irish and therefore extremely reliable–with gathering intel on the facility weeks in advance. Based on Dempsey’s findings, they decided to order Velaasa shoes for their crew as Velaasas tend to be grippier than the standard Nikes. That would turn out to be a wise decision if not quite a cure-all.

Shortly before the SECs, Robinson-O’Hagan had begun throwing the weight with a full windup and four turns, but they considered switching him back to three turns at NCAAs due to the treacherous ring. 

Tarik Robinson-O’Hagan took fifth in the NCAA weight. Photo courtesy of Ole Miss.

Tarik, though, adheres to the “Go big, or go home!” philosophy of throwing, and with Banks, Northern Arizona’s Garret Bernt, and Harvard’s Kenneth Ikeji heading a strong field in Boston, it would clearly take 24 meters to nab the win. 

Tarik felt like he was in 24-meter shape, but he’d need to employ four turns to reach that distance.  “He’s so competitive,” Dempsey explained. “To Tarik, there’s no difference between second and eighth place. He was gunning for the win, so we stayed with four turns.”

Unfortunately, Tarik fouled his first attempt, and could not quite find his rhythm the rest of the comp. Dempsey says the ring was not to blame, an assertion that would be supported by Tarik’s performance in the shot the next day.

“It was,” according to Dempsey, “just one of those days. Really, it was the only bad meet he’s had in the weight. It just happened to occur at NCAAs.”

Meanwhile, both Ikeji (24.32m) and CSUN’s Trey Knight (24.14m) went big. So did Bernt (23.09m) and Banks (23.05m) to round out the top four.

Tarik ended up fifth with a best of 22.97m. The good news though, according to Smith, was that Tarik’s performance in the weight got him angry going into the shot. More on that in a bit.  

Next up was the women’s weight where Jalani Davis, like Tarik, was determined to go for the win. The difference was that Davis would not need a PB to contend. She’d won in 2023 with a toss of 24.51m, and her 25.09m from the 2024 SECs denoted her as the clear favorite. 

Teammate Mitchell and 2023 NCAA second-placer Shelby Frank of Minnesota had both reached 24 meters this season, but neither were likely to threaten Davis–if she could control her considerable firepower on that slick surface. To make this more likely, Team Smith made the decision that in addition to wearing Velaasas, Jalani would begin the comp using two turns rather than her normal three.

After a tentative opener of 21.34m, Davis climbed to 23.14m then 24.80m. With Mitchell and Frank both struggling to find their footing, it appeared 24.80m would likely be enough for the win, so Jalani switched back to using three turns on her final three attempts. 

The meet and collegiate record of 25.56m had been held by Smith pupil Brittany Riley since 2007, and according to Smith, Jalani was in shape to take it down, but “her speed and power didn’t work on that ring.” She sandwiched a 22.88m toss between two fouls, but in the end had to be satisfied with her second consecutive title. As in 2023, Frank (22.69m) finished second and Mitchell (22.15m) third. Remarkably, it was Mitchell’s fourth consecutive NCAA Championships medal in the event.

Jasmine Mitchell medaled in her fourth consecutive NCAA Indoor Championships. Photo courtesy of Ole Miss.

The next day, Robinson-O’Hagan lined up against a men’s shot field loaded with heavy hitters including the aforementioned SEC studs, Georgia’s Alex Kolesnikoff, Ohio State’s Hayden Tobias, Notre Dame’s Michael Shoaf, Wisconsin’s Jason Swarens and Andrew Stone, and Nebraska’s Kevin Shubert. All those guys have 20-meter pop, so Smith decided to have Tarik swing for the fences in round one. 

“We knew Tarik was in good shape,” he explained. “In the last two weeks, he’d had training PRs with several different balls, and we figured if he could hit a big throw early he could shake up the competition.”

That he did, with a PB blast of 20.57m, which put him ahead of Swarens (19.87m) and Wake Forest’s Thomas Kitchell (19.73m).

The SEC crew got going in round two as Stona (19.96m) and Targgart (19.99m) jumped Swarens and Kitchell. Then Stona made matters veeeery interesting by blasting a 20.48m PB on his fourth attempt.

Meanwhile, Smith strongly encouraged Tarik not to rest on his laurels. After that sensational opener, he’d gone 19.58m, Foul, 20.20m, and 20.15m–an outstanding series, but one that left the door open for Stona and perhaps others. Targgart, for example, climbed to 19.95m in round five.

“After his opener,” Smith explained, “Tarik was sliding off to the left on his finish, so I told him to stop being a wuss and stand up at the front and nail it.”

Tarik Robinson-O’Hagan found firm footing in the NCAA shot. Photo courtesy of Ole Miss.

Round six turned out to be anticlimactic as Kitchell, Swarens, and Stona all fouled, and Targgart settled for 19.89m. So when Tarik stepped in for his final attempt, he had the competition sewn up. That did not, however, prevent Smith from giving him a quick “ass-chewing.”

According to Smith, Tarik is an old-school type putter who thrives on emotion and prefers to compete angry. “He actually loves to get chewed out during competitions. He gets pissed at me if I don’t do it.”

Whether it was the quality of the ass-chewing or residual disappointment from his performance in the weight, Robinson-O’Hagan found the fire he needed to close the comp with a new PB and facility record of 21.05m. 

The final throwing event was the women’s shot, with Colorado State’s Mya Lesnar coming in as the favorite. She was the only collegiate woman to crack the 19-meter barrier during the indoor campaign, but figured to be pushed by Oregon’s Jaida Ross who hit a PB of 18.84m at the Razorback Invitational in January, and by Jalani, who according to Smith was in 19-meter-plus shape.

Unfortunately, the slick ring caused trouble from the get go. Mya opened with 15.36m, Alida Van Daalen with 15.14m.  Jalani hit 18.15m in round one, which would have been fine had she been able to build from there, but her living-on-the-edge approach to shot putting was not a good match for the facility and she fouled her five remaining throws. 

She even earned a rare “yellow card” after one failed attempt when she expressed her frustration with a certain four-letter word. This, according to Dempsey, was quite a surprise. “Tarik cusses all the time,” he marveled, “and gets nothing.”

Jalani Davis finished third in the NCAA shot. Photo courtesy of Ole Miss.

Sitting in eighth place after three rounds, Lesnar finally found her balance in the fourth and banged out an 18.53m winner. Ross responded with 18.47m to lock up second place, while Jalani’s 18.15m held up for third. 

What with the competition and the unpredictable nature of a ring that seemed manageable at times and impossible at others, the points did not come easy in Boston. But in the end, the Ole Miss throws squad hauled in 36, a mark they’ll be looking to beat at the outdoor championships in June.

The memory keeper

It would be hard to contest the discus or javelin in most indoor venues without sending paying customers sprinting for the exits, so meets like the recent Indoor World Championships trend to skip the decathlon in favor of a heptathlon featuring the 60-meter dash, long jump, shot put, high jump, 60-meter hurdles, pole vault, and 1000-meter run. In Glasgow, Switzerland’s Simon Ehammer took gold in the event, finishing with 6418 points, 11 more than Norway’s Sander Skotheim.

The bronze medal went to an Estonian named Johannes Erm who, since last November, has been trained by a team of coaches and support personnel put together by Raul Rebane, a journalist and communications consultant.  A quarter century ago, Raul assembled a similar team around Gerd Kanter

Raul first became aware of Gerd in May of 2000 when he stopped by a local competition in Tallinn to watch the decathlete Erki Nool try to sharpen his discus technique.

“I had never heard the name ‘Gerd Kanter,’” Raul recalled later. “I had never seen him. He was very fast in the ring, but he had terrible technique. In this competition, he threw a personal record of around 53.50m, which was nothing special for a guy who was already twenty-one years old.”

But there was something about young Gerd that set him apart from most of the other competitors. 

“His eyes,” Raul says, “were burning.”

Thirty years spent covering sports had taught Raul an important lesson about identifying talent. Great athletes, he observed, are not like you and me.

“They cannot be normal,” he explained. “They must be people for whom achievement is more important than life. Every training to them is a possibility to get better, to take a short step towards their dream. They are always hungry to do more. There is no question about going to training. They just go.” 

Raul invented a name for this type of ferocious determination. He calls it “achievement brains,” and his formula for evaluating athletic potential is simple: “First brains, then muscles. When they are together, jackpot!”

Something Raul saw in Gerd’s eyes at that meet in Tallinn suggested to him that this tall kid with lousy technique might have what it takes to be a champion. A couple of weeks later, he spotted Gerd walking along the street and decided to check his “brains.” 

 “Your name is Gerd Kanter?” 

“Yes.”

“You are a sportsman?” 

“Yes.”

“Who are you?”

“I am a discus thrower.”

“Are you kidding? Fifty-three meters, what kind of discus thrower are you?”

“I am a discus thrower!”

“Okay, let’s go have some coffee.” 

“I don’t drink coffee!”

“Then we’ll have water.”

It was the start of a beautiful relationship. 

Long story short, Raul set about helping Gerd pursue his discus dreams. First, he convinced Vésteinn Hafsteinsson to take Gerd into his training group. Over time, he rounded up sponsors, and put together a support team that included a physiotherapist, massage therapist, and sports psychologist. One day, Raul noticed that a teenager named Hans Üürike had created a Gerd Kanter fan page online, and Hans was drafted into the cause as well. (After contributing his talents to Team Kanter, Hans went on to manage the careers of Daniel Ståhl, Sarah Mitton, Fanny Roos, Simon Pettersson, and Fedrick Dacres.) 

Eight years after Raul and Gerd sat down for that first glass of water, Gerd stood atop the medal stand at the Beijing Olympics. It was the second most impactful day of Raul’s life. 

“The most important event in my life,” he says, “was 20th August 1991, when Estonia got independence. The funny thing is that I was in Japan covering the World Championships and all the journalists there wanted to interview me about what was happening in Estonia. Russian tanks were 80 kilometers from Tallinn. Fortunately, they finally agreed to withdraw, so I went to Tokyo as a citizen of one state–the Soviet Union–and came back citizen of another state, a free Estonia.”

Estonians had suffered terribly under Soviet occupation. Russian troops first arrived in 1940 after Stalin and Hitler signed a pact dividing up eastern Europe. The arrests and deportations began immediately. Police officers. Public officials. Intellectuals. Military personnel. Anyone around whom resistance might coalesce. In just twelve months, an estimated 60,000 Estonians were murdered outright or deported to Soviet gulags. That number included Raul’s grandfather and his grandfather’s three brothers. 

When Estonia finally regained its independence, Raul helped establish the Institute of Historical Memory to remind future generations not to take freedom for granted. The wisdom of that sentiment became evident when Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022. 

Estonians like Raul harbor no illusions about what Vladimir Putin intends for the rest of the former Soviet Bloc if he succeeds in Ukraine. Over the last two years, they have committed to providing aid to the Ukrainians valued at more than two percent of the Estonian gross domestic product.  

My wife, Alice Wood, with Raul Rebane at the Memorial to the Victims of Communism in Tallinn, Estonia.

Recently, Putin expressed his displeasure by placing Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas on a “wanted list” for “desecrating historical memory” after her government ordered the removal of old Soviet monuments left behind from the fifty-year occupation. This was alarmingly similar to accusations Putin directed towards the Ukrainian government on the eve of the Russian invasion two years ago. 

As the Paris Olympics approach, Raul hopes to provide Estonians with a welcome bit of distraction by helping Johannes Erm contend for a medal. But the war in Ukraine and the tragic past of his own country will never be far from his mind. “This is our history” he once explained. ”Invasions and a flattened country. It’s in our collective memory. We won’t forget, and never will.”

The wind keeper

In The Odyssey, a gent named Aeolus is in charge of the four winds. In the world of American discus throwing, that would be Caleb Seal, who runs Throw Town Ramona, a facility near Tulsa, Oklahoma, which Caleb describes as ‘the windiest part of the United States in April.”

The Throw Town facility was constructed with those winds in mind. It features three cages facing different directions so throwers can best take advantage of whatever Mother Nature has to offer on a particular day. Coach Seal believes the spring weather at Throw Town can provide a high-level thrower with a five-meter bump–which can come in handy in an Olympic year when the qualifying marks are 64.50m for women and 67.20m for men.

Josh Syrotchen, Alex Rose, and Coach Seal celebrating big throws last April at Throw Town. Photo courtesy of Coach Seal.

On April 12-14, Throw Town will host a World Athletics bronze-level comp where athletes can take a crack at those qualifiers while picking up ranking points and possibly a chunk of the $30,000 in prize money available that weekend.

One thrower sure to appear is two-time Olympian Alex Rose, who broke the 70-meter barrier at Throw Town last April. 

Alex works full time as a sales engineer, and he’d been especially busy in the days leading up to the 2023 Throw Town comp. A training seminar allowed him time for exactly one hour of lifting and zero hours of throwing the week of the meet. But one aspect of his throwing style might have made Alex the perfect guy to take advantage of the Oklahoma winds.

“I throw very low compared to most guys,” he explained recently. “And my disc travels very fast. At the Worlds in Doha, I was clocked at one of the fastest speeds ever on a 61-meter throw that stayed twelve feet off the ground. But at Ramona, the winds lifted my throws up to what for most people is the normal height. I took a warmup on the first day that weekend, and said, ‘Oh my god, that looks like how I’ve always wanted to throw!’”

In the first of two competitions that weekend, Alex raised his PB from 67.48m to 69.41m. 

The next day was sunny and maybe ten degrees warmer, which allowed Alex to wear his spandex kit. Properly attired, he hit 70.39m.

That throw, he said later, meant “everything.”

“It was a huge goal of mine to break 70 meters. It’s one of those bucket list throws that you never think you’re going to get. But it was the best wind I’ve ever seen, and I hit it well and it just kept going and going. It was a career moment for me, especially with everything I’d been through the past year.”

That would include the birth of his son and managing the stress of driving approximately 750 miles per week for work. Alex says his efforts to find throwing and lifting facilities while on the road have made him a “master at Google Maps,” but he considers himself lucky when he’s able to squeeze two lifting and three throwing sessions into a week. That’s a clear disadvantage when competing against athletes who train full time, but he’s never regretted his decision to start a family and career during his prime athletic years. 

“There was a moment when I had to make the choice,” he recalled. “Do I focus on throwing and risk a late start to my family, and maybe struggle to help support my family, or do I try to do my best given the circumstances?”

He chose the latter option, and has somehow managed to balance family, work, and throwing well enough to make the final at the last two World Championships. 

This summer, he hopes to make his first Olympic final, and will begin his season back at Throw Town where he is likely to be joined by other world class throwers looking to smash PBs while picking up valuable world-ranking points.  

Will Mother Nature cooperate? 

“Heck yes,” says Coach Seal. “They don’t call it ‘tornado alley’ for nothing.”

Book Update

Training for Gold, the Plan that made Daniel Ståhl Olympic Champion is available in both print and eBook editions!

Recently, Coach Garry Power of Ireland kindly posted the following review:

This maybe a niche book in terms of being about a discus thrower and the plan to achieve the ultimate in sport – an Olympic Gold – but it is so much more. The book provides a philosophical insight into meeting the needs of an individual athlete. It is open and honest. Both authors have excelled in achieving a balance of theory and philosophy or art and science. I loved it.

With fifteen-hundred years of literary tradition behind them, the Irish know what they’re talking about when it comes to books, so I’m not going to argue with the man. Nor should you!

In Local News

My dear friend Jim Aikens built a hugely successful throwing program at Fremd High School in the suburbs of Chicago before retiring to Dallas, Texas, to hug his grandchildren and dodge fire ants. He left behind a legacy of excellence and kindness, which I am happy to report has been continued by one of his finest throwers from back in the day, Ken Kemeny, who is currently coaching at St. Charles North High.

Ken and I are fortunate to also be friends with Joe Frontier, founder of the Madison Throws Club and the Throw Big Throw Far Podcast, and like Jim a great coach and better human.

In fact, we like Joe so much, we have decided to steal his idea and form a summer throwing club, this one to be called the Throw Big Throw Far Chicago Club.

Expert instruction will be available in the shot, disc and hammer beginning in June, along with ample opportunities to compete. It’s a great chance to spend the summer months sharpening your throwing technique while hanging out with fellow throws nerds.

Check out the TBTF Chicago Instagram page for more info!

Me on the left. Coach Kemeny–a man with great taste in literature–on the right.

The Monthly Meathead for January, 2024

Leonardo Fabbri, Ryan Crouser and Joe Kovacs on the medal stand in Budapest. Photo courtesy of Mitch Crouser.

It’s always something

If Ryan Crouser has been looking unusually trim on his Instagram vids, it’s not because of camera angles or a sudden embrace of the Mediterranean diet. According to Mitch Crouser, Ryan’s father and coach, Ryan “picked up a bug” just after Thanksgiving while in California filming some publicity pieces for NBC, and then came down with a nasty case of the flu while back home in Oregon for Christmas. 

That made for an unpleasant and frustrating few weeks, but Mitch says Ryan is feeling well again, and either way, a bout with the flu is small potatoes compared to what they’ve dealt with in the past.

In 2022, Ryan contracted Covid just after taking gold at the Worlds in Eugene. One of the symptoms he suffered was a hellacious bout of insomnia that sidetracked Ryan’s preparation for his remaining comps, including the Diamond League Final in Zurich. He recovered in time to make the trip to Europe, then picked up a sinus infection which left him feeling like utter doodoo. But you’d never know it from the results: 22.74m in Zurich, 22.19m in Zagreb, and 22.00m in Bellinzona.

Then, last year, he developed blood clots in his lower left leg three weeks before the Worlds in Budapest, an experience that Mitch, in his understated way, calls “sobering” as it carried implications beyond Ryan’s ability to defend his title. If you follow the sport, you know how things turned out. A one-and-done 21.48m in the morning qualification round followed by a Series for the Ages in that evening’s final: 22.63m, 22.98m, 22.28m, F, F, 23.51m. 

Mitch considers the 2023 Worlds to be Ryan’s finest performance, and it’s hard to disagree.. After literally limping into Budapest, he won by more than a meter against an historically tough field.

Have you seen the film Godzilla Minus One? The part where the Japanese ships drag Godzilla deep down into the ocean then quickly haul him up again so he gets the bends?  When he finally pops to the surface, the Big G  is looking woozy, and the Japanese commander is all like “He’s weakened! Now, we have a chance!” Then Godzilla opens his mouth and bites a battleship in half.

That’s the Budapest men’s shot comp in a nutshell.

This winter, Ryan would like to stomp over to Glasgow and snap up the only major medal–an Indoor Worlds gold–missing from his trophy case. First, he’d need to finish in the top two at the Indoor USATF Champs on February 16-17, but Mitch is not one hundred percent sure he’ll be ready by then. “We’ll see how things roll,” he said. “If his training is going well, we’ll try to go for World Indoors. Right now, we’re taking it week by week. Of course, the big goal is the Olympics later this summer, so if it doesn’t seem like Ryan is ready in February and March, there’s no reason to rush it.”

While I had him on the phone, I wanted to ask Mitch about a topic that came up at the European Discus Conference this past November. The timetable for the 2024 European Championships in Rome had just come out, and vexation ensued over the fact that the qualification and final rounds of the men’s discus were scheduled on the same day.  That’s a situation shot putters like Ryan have faced regularly at Worlds–as they did this summer in Budapest–and sometimes at the Olympic Games.

One of those was the Olympics in Rio where Ryan won his first gold. “We got up at 4:00 a.m.” Mitch recalled. “It took an hour to get to the stadium. Then you warm up and compete, ride the bus for an hour back to the village, eat, turn around and do it all over again. Later on, we looked back at the outline we prepared for everything we had to do that day, and when you break it down line by line it’s insanity.”

“The people in power have no clue what they’re asking the athletes to do,” he continued.  “If they want to see the biggest throws possible, having the qualification and final on the same day is not the way to do it.”

Ryan showed in Rio and in Budapest that he could handle a qualification/finals double header, and I asked Mitch if there was any secret to that success. 

“We prepare for it,” he explained. “And the biggest part is the mental part. You have to be mentally in tune with what you’re going to face, and it helps to have been through it more than once. In this case, experience is worth a lot.”

Mitch actually began preparing Ryan for the mental rigors of throwing not long after Ryan first started competing as a youngster.

“We’d play little games at practice,” he says. “I’d tell Ryan, ‘This is your last throw in the Olympics’ or something like that just to up the pressure a little bit. I learned during my own career that performing well when it counts is a learned ability, that everyone at the highest level is so good physically, the big competitions come down to who can hold up best mentally.”

Ryan and his fellow Americans will get plenty of practice at holding up under pressure in 2024. At last year’s Outdoor Championships, the US got to fill four slots in the men’s shot for Budapest with Ryan receiving a bye as defending World Champ. There are no byes for the Olympics, so a country which last year had five of the world’s top eleven men’s putters will have to whittle it down to three for Paris. The Olympic Trials will take place June 21-30 at Hayward. Mark your calendar!

Iceland’s most recent volcanic event lights up the night sky. Photo courtesy of Vésteinn Hafsteinsson

Thar she blows

The recent volcanic eruption in Iceland has gotten a lot of attention, as volcanic eruptions often do, but fortunately it does not appear this one will be nearly as disruptive to the rest of the planet as past outbursts. In 2010, for example, the volcano known as Eyjafjallajökull (If you say that out loud three times, I’m pretty sure a gnome or fairy will appear) blew massive amounts of ash into the atmosphere and bollixed up international air traffic for weeks. 

John Dagata has vivid memories of that incident, which he shared with me during a recent conversation. John, who currently trains World Champion Laulauga Tausaga, was at the time coaching for Great Britain, a pressure-packed assignment as the Brits were determined to make a strong showing at the 2012 London Olympics.

The day the 2010 eruption began, John was in Faro, Portugal, for a training camp with twenty-two British athletes. They were meant to head home the next day, but when  Eyjafjallajökull caused the grounding of all flights in the region, John tried to extend their stay until he could figure out an alternative method of travel.

Unfortunately, the person in charge told him the facility was fully booked and the Brits would have to leave at their appointed time. 

“I was walking back to my room,” he recalled, “thinking ‘How are we going to get back?’ when I noticed there was a bus depot right across the street.”

John stopped in to inquire about possibilities and ended up leasing a bus to transport him and his squad to the town of Roscoff on the coast of France. From there, they would take a ferry across the Channel to Plymouth. 

There was one problem. 

He needed to come up with 28,000 Euros to cover the costs. 

After briefly mulling over his situation, John devised a plan. His training group consisted of approximately twenty-five athletes and coaches. That left plenty of empty seats on the bus he’d leased. Might there be other people stranded in Portugal desperate enough to pay a premium for a chance to get home? John was determined to find out.

The team manager at the time was a man named Mike Delaney. After securing the deal for the bus, John went to him and said, “We need some cardboard.”

They made signs advertising seats on the bus to Roscoff for 1,000 Euros each and took them to the airport. “There were thousands of people stranded there,” John recalls. “The place was packed. People were sleeping on the floor. Nobody had any idea when planes would be allowed to fly again.”

They quickly sold twenty-eight spots, and later that night John and Mike stood at the front of a packed bus.  Mike spoke first. “Welcome to Icelandic adventures!” he announced. 

Then John explained the ground rules. They would travel the entire length of Portugal, northern Spain and France, with no breaks other than a quick fifteen-minute stop every three hours. 

“Anyone who causes problems,” he warned, “will be shown the door.”

A couple began bickering shortly after departure, sending John into “Don’t make me come back there!” mode. Other than that, the fifty-hour trip passed smoothly. 

By the time they reached Roscoff, John says the bus “looked like a bomb had gone off. People were laying everywhere.”

He boarded the ferry to Plymouth with 28,000 Euros in a bag, which he later handed to his astonished boss. “I’m pretty sure,” he says looking back, “I’d have been fired if we hadn’t scraped together that cash.” 

The Federation sent a bus to fetch the squad from Plymouth. John could finally relax as they settled into the last, easiest leg of their long journey, a four-hour drive to London. Ten minutes later, the bus ran out of gas. 

This is the first of two books about Daniel Ståhl’s time with Vésteinn Hafsteinsson

Finally!

In December of 2020, Roger Einbecker, Vésteinn Hafsteinsson, and I agreed to collaborate on writing a book. Three years later, we’ve got one! During that time, we faced and overcame many obstacles, and more than once I thought to myself, “Geez, this is what it must be like to give birth!”

I was too smart to say those words around my wife, an actual woman who has given birth, but to my amazement, she said them to me not long ago. Her name is Alice Wood, and she has produced two books and three children, so you can take that analogy as fact when she utters it.

Here’s the deal on our current book about Daniel. Vésteinn trained him for ten years, during which time Daniel won World and Olympic gold along with a Worlds silver. The book is a deep dive in to the plan Vésteinn used for Daniel during the 2020/2021 season to prepare him for the Tokyo Games.

The plan that prepared Daniel to take Tokyo gold.

Vésteinn analyzes at least one sample week from each phase, with anecdotes and lessons he learned during his thirty years as a coach.

This book is currently available on Amazon, and our next book–the story of Vésteinn and Daniel’s collaboration–will be ready soon.

Kara Winger to present at the 2024 ITCCCA clinic!

The annual ITCCCA clinic will take place on January 12-13 at the Eaglewood Resort in Itasca, Illinois, with arguably the best lineup of throws presenters in ITCCCA clinic history.  Dave Astrauskas of the University of Wisconsin will open the proceedings on Friday with a presentation on developing discus technique. I saw Dave give a version of this talk at the recent National Throws Clinic in Portage, and I think coaches will find a lot they can use in Dave’s approach.

The second session on Friday will feature two throws speakers. Pat Trofimuk of Waubonsie Valley High School will conduct a session titled “Fundamentals of the Throws” in which he will demonstrate a series of simple drills that can be used to teach and sharpen rotational throwing technique. Feel free to take out your phone and record during this one, and you’ll walk away with a small library of extremely useful drills.

Also during session two, ITCCCA is proud to present Kara Winger, the four-time Olympian, national record holder, and 2022 World silver medalist in the javelin. Her first talk of the weekend will be titled “Train Hard and Stay Healthy: Incorporating Rehab into throws training.” In this presentation, Kara will explain some simple and effective exercises that can be incorporated into your throwers’ daily workouts to help them stay healthy over the course of a long season.

Kara will take the stage again in the third and final Friday evening session to offer advice on how to help your athletes deliver their top performances at the biggest competitions. We’ve all seen how tough it can be for a young thrower to find their rhythm at a major comp. Kara faced those challenges at four Olympic Trials, four Olympics, and five World Championships, and learned much in the process. If you are on speaking terms with coaches from other events, you’ll want to give them a heads up about this presentation as Kara’s advice will be applicable to all sorts of athletes. 

On Saturday, the ITCCCA clinic will feature four sessions you won’t want to miss.  Josh Freeman, former Illinois state champion and collegiate all-American, will team with his wife and current world-class discus thrower Alex Morgan to detail and demonstrate shot put fundamentals.

Kara will take the stage again for session two to discuss the qualities that make an effective coach. Over her long career, Kara worked with some outstanding mentors, and she’ll give tips on how to be your best self when dealing with your athletes. This is another presentation that will appeal to coaches of all events.

Josh and Alex take over again to present on the discus for session three, with Alex demonstrating the approach that made her 2023 Oceania champion.

The final season on Saturday will feature a panel discussion with Josh, Alex, Kara, and long time collegiate throws coach Scott Cappos, who recently authored an excellent book on shot and disc technique and training which will be available for purchase at the ITCCCA clinic. During this session, you’ll be able to ask the panelists anything you’d like about technique, training, and/or life at the highest levels of our sport.

In addition to Scott’s shot and disc manual, the book “Training for Gold: The Plan that made Daniel Ståhl an Olympic Champion” will also be available for purchase for $25 at this year’s clinic. This is a book that longtime Illinois high school throws coach Roger Einbecker and I put together with Vésteinn Hafsteinsson who coached Daniel to Olympic and World Championship gold medals in the discus. 

The book details the training plan Vésteinn used during the 2020-2021 Olympic year, and is full of insights into how to devise and execute a lifting and throwing program that will bring out the best in your athletes.

If you have been wavering about signing up for this year’s clinic and wondering if it will be worth the time and effort, wonder no more. You won’t find a better lineup of presenters anywhere.

One last thing.

I mentioned having seen Dave Astrauskas present at the 2023 National Throws Clinic, and I just wanted to give folks an early heads up that Mark Harsha and the National Throws Association will host another event next December featuring top throws coaches. The 2023 clinic featured John Smith, Jerry Clayton, Dave, and JC Lambert. It won’t be easy to top that lineup in 2024, but Mark is determined to try. Stay tuned for more details!

2023 National Throws Conference presents a powerhouse lineup!

On December 15-17, Portage High School in Portage, Indiana, will host the 2023 National Throws Coaches Conference, featuring some of the best throwing coaches in the entire US of A.

The sessions begin on Friday with Gary Aldrich of Carnegie Mellon University speaking on glide shot put technique. Gary has been a big part of the American throws community for many years, and was in charge of the USA throws squad at the 2021 Olympic Games. He’s a great guy with tons of practical experience to share.

Gary will be followed by Jerry Clayton, one of the most accomplished coaches in the history of the sport. During stints at the University of Illinois, Southwest Texas State, Florida, Auburn, Michigan and LSU, Jerry coached 16 NCAA champions, including Edis Elkasević, Gábor Máté, and Cory Martin. During his Friday session, Jerry will present on rotational shot technique.

The final speaker on Friday will cover discus technique. That will be current University of Wisconsin coach Dave Astrauskas, who has produced a bevy of top throwers including Danny Block, Riley Budde, Kelsey Card, Alicia DeShasier, and most recently 9-time All-American Josie Schaefer. 

Saturday will feature additional sessions led by Gary, Jerry, and Dave, after top high school coach James Bell of North Central High in Indianapolis opens the proceedings with a presentation on practice planning. Gary, Jerry, and Dave (It’s fun to say. Try it.) will be hosting practical sessions, during which they will coach an athlete or two through their favorite throwing drills. 

As if that were not enough, the legendary John Smith, coach of Connie Price Smith, Jeneva Stevens, Gwen Berry, Raven Saunders, Jessica Ramsey and many other world-class throwers, will present two sessions on Saturday, one on weight training and another on how to convert a glider to the spin technique, something he has done successfully over the years, most recently with Jalani Davis who finished third at the 2023 USATF Outdoor Championships and made the US team for Budapest.

As if that were not enough, lunch is included. 

The conference will conclude on Sunday the 17th with hammer sessions led by Coach Smith and his former pupil JC Lambert, the throws coach at University of Illinois and husband and coach of 2019 World champion DeAnna Price. 

You may have noticed that the United States has become a women’s hammer powerhouse recently, and John Smith and JC Lambert are two of the architects of that transformation, so you won’t want to miss this rare opportunity to learn their approach to coaching this event.

Also on Sunday, Coach Clayton will present on the javelin. 

That’s a lot of knowledge for not a lot of money ($100 for coaches, $50 for athletes). Go to nationalthrows.com to register!

The Monthly Meathead: Aussies at the Diamond League Final, European Discus Conference Preview

Photo courtesy of Matthew Quine for Diamond League AG

What is it that makes Australians so nice? Do the crocodiles eat all the mean people there? Or does growing up around koala bears naturally make folks more relaxed and outgoing?

We’ll never know.

One thing’s for sure, though. I greatly enjoyed speaking with members of the Australian contingent at the 2023 Diamond League Final.

The women’s jav kicked off the comp at 11 a.m. on a lovely Saturday morning in Eugene. At that moment, it was 5 a.m. Sunday in Sydney, which is where 2023 World Championships bronze medalist Mackenzie Little lives and trains. I might have been a tad grouchy were I experiencing the level of jet lag that Mackenzie and her coach, Angus McEntyre, must have been feeling at that moment, but they appeared to be having a wonderful time, smiling and laughing whenever she bopped over for a quick chat at the rail between attempts. 

Photo courtesy of me.

Mackenzie did not have her best stuff on this day. She set a PB of 65.70m at the Lausanne Diamond League Meeting earlier this season, and went 63.38m in winning her Budapest bronze, but she reached the 60-meter line only once in Eugene and settled for a best of 61.24m to take third behind Worlds champ Haruka Kitaguchi and fellow Australasian Tori Peeters.

That did not, however, harsh Mackenzie’s mellow. She was happy and gracious during a post-comp chat.

“I had a good time,” she admitted. “Not because I got the throws I wanted necessarily, but this core group of throwers has gotten quite close and I was excited watching them.”

When asked why the javelin ladies seem to get on so well, Mackenzie explained, “You can’t have an ego when you throw jav. I think we all know how frustrating it can be sometimes, so we understand each other.”

The most frustrating time for Mackenzie came when she returned to Australia after a stellar career representing Stanford, for whom she was NCAA champion in 2018 and 2019.

The transition from collegiate to pro athlete can be tricky, and Mackenzie had trouble finding her footing. Lingering shoulder and elbow problems did not help. She reached out to McEntyre on the recommendation of the head Australian jav coach, but her level of frustration gave him pause. 

“I think we can make this work,” he told her at the time, “But I can’t do much if you’re stuck in a negative headspace.”

“She was,” McEntyre recalls, “a bit lost. I was coaching one of her good friends, a javelin thrower named Chrissie Grun, and Mackenzie told Chrissie, ‘I don’t know if I can do this anymore.’ But Chrissie said, ‘Yes, you can, and Angus is someone you can work with.’”

It was a plus that Coach McEntyre’s “day job” was running a chiropractic clinic, so he was able to help Mackenzie mend as they got to know each other. Looking back, he says “it was the chiropractic that started the relationship. During the Covid period we built up her shoulder and elbow, which also helped us build trust.”

In October of 2020, she reached 60 meters for the first time in two years, hitting a PB 61.47m at a comp in Sydney.

She PB’d again during the Olympic qualification round a year later in Tokyo, and ended up finishing eighth in the final. McEntyre says they’ve been “on cruise control since,” with only the occasional “hiccup” along the way. 

At the 2022 Worlds, Mackenzie squeaked through qualifying in 12th place, then hit a 63.22m PB on her opener in the final. She was unable to build on that though, and finished in fifth, just five excruciating centimeters short of the podium. 

This summer, she started slowly in the Budapest qualification round before bashing 63.45m on her third attempt, then started slowly again in the final. A best of 61.41m had her in fifth after three rounds, but this time she was able to keep climbing. “I learned a lot over the past year,” she said later. “And I was not going to be fifth again.”

Mackenzie produced her best throw on her last attempt, a 63.38m toss that won her the bronze.

And here I will tell you something crazy. 

Mackenzie fought her way to the top of her sport while at the same time attending medical school. She is preparing for a career as a surgeon, and took her final exam on the flight from Sydney to Eugene for the DL final.

When asked how she managed this seemingly impossible task, Mackenzie shrugged. “Everyone in athletics has their passions outside. Mine just happens to be a little more structured. But I have a little more help than the average person with my coach taking care of me.”

Having played rugby at a high level while undertaking his chiropractic studies, McEntyre says he was able to relate to the challenges Mackenzie faced trying to balance athletics and academics.

“The biggest challenge for me,’ he says, “is to make sure she doesn’t get cooked or exhausted. I’ve always been careful around exam weeks, but it helps that the study side is more highly strung for her, so it can be a bit of a break when we switch to jav mode.”

McEntyre’s duties have included helping Mackenzie on practice quizzes, sometimes at unlikely moments. During early warmups prior to competing in Budapest, for example. 

“We were having a contest to see who could get the most questions right,” he explained. “I guess most people might think that’s weird.”

Not as weird as being lucid and engaging while jet-lagged, as both “Macs” were on this exquisite afternoon.

“I’ve come to comps a little jet lagged and a little tired before,” Mackenzie told me. “It just builds my confidence. There’s no excuse for not throwing well. I am ready, though, for a big sleep.” 

And with that, she left the shade of the media tent and strode off into a sun almost as bright as her future.

Photo courtesy of Marta Gorczynska for Diamond League AG

Another amicable Aussie competing in Eugene was discus thrower Matt Denny, a man who has mastered the art of throwing big when it counts. In 2018, for example, he produced a lifetime best of 64.03m to win the Australian Championships. A year later, he repeated as Australian champ with another PB, this time 65.28m, which he topped at the Doha Worlds by launching 65.43m to take sixth. He broke 67 meters for the first time during the Olympic final in 2021, and 68 meters for the first time this summer in Budapest

Denny’s coach, Dale Stevenson, says that some people are just “exceptional competitors,” and Matt is one of them. “His happy place,” according to Stevenson, “is out there competing against the top athletes. It brings the best out of him.”

That was evident in Eugene, where Denny injected some much-needed brio into an otherwise subdued competition. He did his best to engage the crowd before each attempt, and refused to take it personally when they ignored him prior to his third throw. (The men’s 800 meters was about to begin and this was, after all, Eugene.) 

The 66.36m he produced on that attempt put Denny in third place behind Kristjan Čeh and Daniel Ståhl, the twin Everests of the event.

A lesser individual might have been content with such a throw, coming as it did at the end of a loooong season. For unexplained reasons, winter here is summer in Australia, and Denny’s first comp took place way back on February 11th. 

But Coach Stevenson knows his man, and throwing against giant World Champions (Kristjan, Daniel and Andrius Gudžius have won every World title since 2017) did in fact bring out the best of Denny on this gorgeous afternoon in Eugene.

He jumped ahead of Ståhl by a centimeter with a 67.37m toss in round four, then blasted a new PB of 68.43m on his final attempt to barge past Čeh for the title of 2023 Diamond League Champ, a win Denny described afterwards as “really satisfying.”

“You idolize the greats,” he explained. “You put them on a pedestal. Especially Daniel, who is probably the greatest ever as a competitor. So it was a special moment to get the win and have Daniel be the first guy to give me a hug and congratulate me. It reminded me of how good a community this is, for them to be like, ‘Lets go get some beers!’”

As to the varying levels of crowd support, Denny said he learned from Olympic and World champ high jumper Gimbo Tamberi that it’s best to get people’s attention by yelling before asking them to clap. He tried this before his sixth attempt and drew a spirited response. The extra bit of energy he absorbed from the crowd was all Denny needed on a day when he felt ready to rumble.

“I had some warmups of around 65 meters,” he explained. “And I know I’m in good nick if I’m doing that. When the comp began, I kept falling out of my delivery, but I knew there was something there.”

The next step will be getting on the podium at an Olympics or Worlds, no easy task with Čeh, Ståhl, and Mykolas Alekna throwing at historically high levels. With those three in the mix, it could conceivably take 70 meters to get on the stand in Paris and Tokyo.

In an effort to raise his game, Denny added a wrinkle to his technique this season by setting up for the throw with his right foot offset a bit then stepping forward after his windup. You’ve heard of the “Crouser slide”?  Let’s call this the “Denny step.” If you say it fast like it’s one word it sounds pretty cool. Denny-step. Denny-step. Denny-step. See?

Matt and Dale, if you pursue a trademark, I’d like a t-shirt.

Dale says the Denny-step evolved to help Matt keep his hips “underneath his shoulders on entry,” and it might not be the end of their tinkering.  

“We’re playing around with other variations, too,” he explained. “We’ll experiment with some of those during the Aussie domestic season from January to April.”

Dale did not divulge the exact nature of what they’ll be trying, but according to internet sources, he and Denny are considering everything from learning to cuss in Lithuanian to a never-before-seen discus move known as the “Kick-the-Crotch-of-Kristjan.”

In the meantime…

Are you free on 10-12th November?

If so, join me in beautiful Tallinn, Estonia, for the 2023 European Discus Conference which features excellent beer and major insights into the technique and training of guys like Daniel Ståhl, Sam Mattis, Kristjan Čeh, and Mykolas Alekna.

The coaches you see in the above photo will share their knowledge through a series of lectures and live demonstrations and, even better, you can ask follow-ups or just shoot the breeze with them and other coaches from all over the world while dining or maybe doing the backstroke at the amazing Tallink Spa and Conference Hotel where the conference is held. Here’s a bird’s-eye view:

And see this person popping out of the water?

On November 10-12th that might be Gerd Kanter or Kristjan Čeh or Dane Miller. I’ll end here so you can start checking flights.

The Monday Morning Meathead, October 2nd Edition: Hammer time in Canada

Camryn Rogers with hammer gold. Photo courtesy of Mo Saatara

Throw Canada

I’ve always admired Canadians for their bacon and civility, but how in the name of Gretzky did they suddenly turn into a hammer powerhouse?

It started with poop, actually.

The sweet smell of success

In 2002, Derek Evely, at the time head coach of the Kamloops Track and Field Club, received an email from a retired hockey player named Igor Chibirev who was contacting Derek on behalf of his father-in-law, a former Soviet hammer coach who wanted to immigrate to Canada. 

“He didn’t say his father-in-law’s name,” remembered Evely. “But he referred to him as the ‘coach of Sedykh,’ so I was like, ‘Oh my god, that’s Bondarchuk!’”

The “Sedykh” referred to in the email was Yuriy Sedykh, the two-time Olympic gold medalist and longtime World Record holder in the hammer. His coach, Anatoliy Bondarchuk, was and still is considered by many to be the world’s foremost hammer expert.

Once Evely did some detecting to make sure he wasn’t being pranked, he called Igor and found out that Bondarchuk, widely known as “Dr. B”, was currently coaching in Kuwait but wanted to move closer to his daughter, who lived with Igor in Calgary. Igor found Evely by googling the words “hammer” and “Canada.”

Derek Evely, Dr. B, and Dylan Armstrong. Photo courtesy of Derek Evely.

That search initially yielded the name “Dylan Armstrong,” the 2000 World U20 hammer silver medalist. Further research led Igor to Evely, who was Armstrong’s coach.

Excited by the possibility of bringing Dr. B to Kamloops, Evely set about finding a way to pay him. He asked for assistance from the provincial and national federations but was turned down.

That left Evely with no choice. He would resort to poop.

For years, the Kamloops club had done an annual fundraiser where they delivered manure to local farmers, gardeners, anyone really who found themselves in need of a load of crap. 

“By that point,” he recalls, “we’d been doing the manure sale for five years and it had really taken off. We’d take orders for weeks in advance, then deliver it during the first weekend of April. It got so popular that we were making fifty grand every spring.”

Evely decided to take a shot and offered Dr. B $33,000 from his poop proceeds along with a free room in his basement. Dr. B accepted.

That summer, Evely traveled to Paris as part of the Canadian team for the 2003 Worlds, then took a train to Hungary where Dr. B was presenting at an IAAF clinic. 

He brought a contract for Dr. B to sign, and was invited to attend a training session during which he sat between Dr. B and fellow hammer legend Pál Németh while newly-minted World champ Yipsi Moreno took some throws. 

Evely remembers Moreno’s coach being so intimidated by the presence of Németh and Bondarchuk that he hid behind a post for the entire session.

Dr. B agreed to make the move to Kamloops following the 2004 Olympics. At the time, he was coaching 2002 U20 Worlds silver medalist Ali Mohamed Al Zenkawil, and wanted to mentor him through his first Games.

Ill health further delayed Dr. B’s arrival, but finally, in the spring of 2005, he made the move. He arrived the weekend of the manure sale.

“That weekend is always nuts,” says Evely. “I picked Dr. B and Igor up from the airport in a passenger van that was loaded with manure. They were looking at each other like, ‘What the..?’”

Evely dropped Dr. B at his house then went on distributing poop until late that night. 

“I got home and just wanted to go to bed, but when I knocked on his door to check on him, he handed me four pages of what looked like gobbledygook. It turns out he’d spent the day with a Russian/English dictionary trying to translate his training theories so he could publish them as a book.”

Every night for the next six months, Evely sat next to Dr. B at a computer trying to find a way to clearly enunciate his methods in English. They did not end up publishing a book, but Evely eventually developed an online course based on their collaboration.

A year or so after Dr. B’s arrival in Canada, Evely left Kamloops to take a coaching assignment in Edmonton, and Dr. B took over as Dylan Armstrong’s full time coach. Dylan, by then, had become primarily a shot putter, and under Dr. B’s tutelage went on to win a bronze medal at the 2008 Olympics, a silver medal at the 2011 World Championships, and a bronze medal at the 2013 World Championships. 

Use the force, Luke

After hanging up his throwing shoes, Dylan went into coaching. He continued to learn from Dr. B, and dreamed of some day using that system to produce a champion hammer thrower. 

“I’ve been around hammer my whole life,” he told me during a recent phone conversation. “I understood it, understood what I did wrong and what I did right when I was a hammer thrower. And with all the knowledge I got from Dr. B, I felt like I could do something special if I could just find the right guy.”

The “right guy,” in Armstong’s mind, had to be tall.

“You look at the top throwers,” he says, “the guys that produce fantastic results like Ryan Crouser and Daniel Ståhl, and they are tall and fast, not short and fast. I knew if I had a shorter athlete with some speed, I could get them to 75 or 76 meters, but when you have someone with levers and a good training system, that’s ideal.”

Dylan found his man at a local meet in British Columbia. His name was Ethan Katzberg.

At the time, Katzberg was 6’3” and growing, but like a lot of tall young guys, very skinny. 

“He looked like a high jumper,” Dylan recalls. “But when I saw him throw, I was like ‘Man, that guy can move!’ I pointed him out to a buddy of mine and said I thought I could get that kid to throw 80 meters some day, and he was like, ‘That’s crazy talk!’ But I didn’t care. To me, all Ethan needed was a long term plan and a good environment with good support and he’d be something special.”

Dylan Armstrong and Ethan Katzberg in Budapest. Photo courtesy of Dylan Armstrong.

Even Dylan, though, was surprised at how quickly Ethan developed. Per the World Athletics site, here is Ethan’s progression since 2019:

2019:  55.72m

2021: 69.75m

2022: 76.36m

2023: 81.25m

According to Dylan, several factors allowed Ethan to improve so swiftly. First, “he’s very coordinated and coachable. If I tell him I need it an inch higher here or an inch lower there, he can do it.”

Also, Ethan possesses a remarkable “talent for development.”

“The way Ethan is wired genetically, I can peak him really fast,” Dylan says, “and we can peak multiple times per year, which is something a lot of athletes can’t handle. You can have a guy with the same skills and body type, but they might need seventy or eighty or even a hundred sessions to reach peak condition, so it takes them a lot longer to develop.”

Ethan also possesses a rare ability to remain calm under pressure, a trait he first displayed at the 2022 Commonwealth Games where he PB’d to take the silver medal.

Dylan was not surprised when his angular apprentice showed poise that day in Birmingham. “Ethan,” he pointed out, “is from Vancouver Island. So, he’s laid back.”

But performing well at a Commonwealth Games is one thing. Standing up under the pressure of a World Championships against the likes of Poland’s Wojciech Nowicki and Pawel Fajdek is quite another matter. Those gents came into Budapest with a dozen World and Olympic medals between them, and no one would have blamed Ethan, a twenty-one-year-old World Champs rookie, had he wilted in their presence. 

Luckily, Dylan began preparing Ethan for such a scenario earlier this season. In order to “normalize competing against the world’s best,” he took Ethan to meets like the LA Grand Prix where he faced Nowicki, top American Rudy Winkler, and Olympic and World medalist Eivind Henricksen. They then embarked on a European tour featuring comps in Germany, Poland, France, and Norway. 

Dylan also used the trip to impart the hard lessons he’d learned during his own career as a thrower. “We’d talk one-on-one on the train in Germany or at our hotel or during lunch, and I’d take him through all the possible scenarios that can come up at big meets. What happens if there’s a delay because the laser breaks or the hundred meters is about to start, for example. You can lose focus and things can go sideways pretty quickly if you’re not ready for that stuff.”

Ethan demonstrated his readiness in round one of qualifying in Budapest by launching an 81.18m PB. 

After that throw, Ethan and Dylan went immediately to the warmup track where Ethan took another eight tosses and got in a quick lift. This was in keeping with his normal training routine. “You have to complete your session,” says Dylan. “It’s important to stay regimented and not throw anything out of whack.” 

The day of the final, Ethan informed his coach that he felt “really good,” then went out and hit 80.18m and 80.02m on his first two attempts.

It was, according to Dylan,  the most exciting hammer comp he’d seen. “Being there in a country that loves hammer and supports the throws, was amazing. They had so many people there for Bence Halász, it was almost like we stole the show from the 100-meter final. Right about the time the 100-meters was supposed to start, Halász went 80.82m, and people were going crazy. They were like, ‘Oh, the 100-meters is on? Great. Now, let’s get back to the hammer.”

After three rounds, Ethan was in third behind Halász and Nowicki. When he and Dylan spoke before his fifth attempt, Dylan reminded him to “be patient. Keep the right foot on the ground a little longer and let the ball stretch on you.”

Ethan then stepped in and launched another PB, this time 81.25m. It ended up being enough to earn him gold. 

“He put a little more cream on the end of that one,” says Dylan. “But all his throws felt relatively easy to him. He told me later that he could have gone further, but I just said ‘Let’s get back home, take a rest, debrief, and get ready for next year.’”

World Championships medalists Wojciech Nowicki, Ethan Katzberg, and Bence Halász. Photo courtesy of Dylan Armstrong

Make mine a double

The fun resumed three days later as 2022 World silver medalist Camryn Rogers secured a spot in this year’s final by hitting 73.95m on her second attempt in qualifying.

For anyone thinking it is no big deal for a defending silver-medalist to advance, let me point out that neither defending champ Brooke Andersen nor 4x World and 3x Olympic champ  Anita Wlodarczyk made it through qualifying.

The prospect of bombing out in prelims has, according to her coach Mo Saatara, “caused Camryn a lot of stress” in the past, so in spite of her success at the 2022 Worlds, they decided to focus on building qualification confidence this season.

At the Brutus Hamilton Invite last April for example, Mo and Camryn decided to mimic the pressure of a qualifying round by limiting her to three attempts (rather than the full six all competitors received) with the goal of surpassing 75 meters on each. 

The result was the best series of Camryn’s career to that point: 77.00m, 76.04m, 77.30m.

A week later, at the Mt. SAC Relays, they took a different approach. 

“After the Hamilton Invite,” Mo explained, “we said, ‘Ok, now you got through qualification, let’s see how you do if we treat Mt. SAC like the final.” 

At a major championships, athletes are given the opportunity to take some early throws at a warm-up facility outside the main stadium. They are then transported to a call room and left to sit for the better part of an hour before being escorted into the competition venue. Once inside, they are generally allowed two or three warm-up throws before the comp begins. This is different, sometimes drastically so, from the procedure at a lesser comp like the Hamilton or Mt. SAC, where athletes receive a plethora of warm-up tosses just prior to competing. 

As mentioned above, Dylan Armstrong took care in the months leading up to Worlds to talk Ethan Katzberg through championships protocol and alert him to all the possible stressors that might arise. On the day of the comp, they were ready to take a minimalist approach to warmups, 

“With the adrenaline that comes from competing at a championships,” he says, “all an athlete needs is some stretching and those two throws inside the stadium, anyway. It’s best to preserve all the energy you can, especially when it’s thirty-four degrees and humid like it was in Budapest.”

Mo advocates a similar approach. 

He says the problem with taking throws at the warmup track is that “you do a bunch of stuff then have to sit in the call room, and that can cause your rhythm to get weird.”

At Mt. SAC, he had Camryn rehearse for Budapest by doing a general warmup then sitting for an hour. Prior to competing, she took only two warm-up throws.

Apparently, that was enough, as Camryn produced the kind of series (77.84m, 75.61m, 76.79m, 76.03m, 75.37m, 77.14m) that would likely put her on the podium if she could match it at Worlds. 

“The series was stable,” Mo said afterwards. “Which is critical. If you look at the great champions, they had stable technique they could repeat multiple times in a competition.”

Besides stability, any female hammer thrower with ideas of contending in Budapest would also need the ability to go big. The average winning throw from the five previous Worlds was 78.74m, and with Brooke Andersen improving her PB to 80.17m in May, 2019 champ DeAnna Price getting back into form after two years of battling injuries, Wlodarczyk also returning from injury, and defending bronze-medalist Janee’ Kassanavoid putting together another solid season, it was likely to take at least that distance to challenge for gold in 2023.

In Camryn’s third meet of the season, the USATF LA Grand Prix, she showed, with an assist from Dylan Armstrong, that she could bang with the best of them. 

Mo, busy that weekend with NCAA regionals, received video updates from LA courtesy of Dylan, who was on site coaching Katzburg.

Mo could tell Camryn was ready for something big based on the videos Dylan sent him of her warm-up throws. Once the comp began, she “got a little tight and started having some problems with her orbit,” but with Dylan relaying corrections, Camryn found her rhythm and launched a PB 78.62m in round five. 

“The field at UCLA is a little bit uphill,” Mo explained. “So that throw could have been even farther. Either way, she showed she can put a throw out there and beat some of the best women, which was important going into Worlds.”

Camryn surpassed 77 meters again twice in June while competing in Poland, then once more at the Canadian Championships in July.

Mo and Camryn did a pre-Worlds training camp at a facility near Barcelona, adapting to the time change and acclimating to the kind of heat they’d experience in Budapest. They were thrilled to see Katzberg take gold, an achievement that Mo says, “set the standard high” for Camryn.

Her first attempt in the Budapest qualification round went only 70.97m, a slight misstep that Mo attributes to a slight difference in the surface texture between the ring at the warmup track where they had practiced since arriving in Budapest and the competition ring inside the stadium. 

“They were both good circles,” he says. “The one in the stadium was just a little faster, so Camryn had to get adjusted. After that first throw she said, ‘Whoa, what just happened?’ but she was feeling really good, so I just told her ‘Go take care of business and let’s get out of here.’”

She did, surpassing the automatic qualifying mark with her 73.95m toss. 

As a side note, the unusual design of the cage was another factor the hammer throwers had to contend with.

German throws coach René Sack told me he’d seen athletes struggle with the same type of cage at a past German championships. “It feels different from a normal cage,” he explained, “because it is shaped like a rectangle”

American throws meister John Smith concurred. “Most cages are more of a semicircle,” he said when asked about the setup in Budapest. “But this one felt more like you were throwing out of a tunnel. That changes the thrower’s perception visually of how to get the throw out of the cage.”

The hammer cage in Budapest. During competition, the sides would be extended forward giving it a rectangular shape.

The main challenge though, according to both coaches, was the lack of support poles in the Budapest cage, which made it harder for the athletes to orient themselves when setting up for a throw.

According to Smith, a typical cage will have a pole “lined up dead center to the ring.”  Without that reference point, throwers had to choose other landmarks to get themselves in the right spot.

JC Lambert, husband and coach of DeAnna Price, said they used the pre-meet walkthrough day in the stadium to try to figure out a suitable marker. They decided they couldn’t use the television camera stand that was set up behind the cage as it was slightly off center, so JC suggested lining up on one of the wheels attached to the cage as it appeared to be in just the right spot. All went well for DeAnna in qualification where she was one-and-done with a 76.25m toss, but JC realized something was amiss when she fouled her first two attempts in the final. 

His view was obstructed by the television camera, but Smith was sitting in a different spot and realized right away that DeAnna was lining up incorrectly. He immediately texted a video to JC. 

“Luckily,” JC recalled afterwards, “we had time before her third throw, so I called her over and said, ’Move three or four inches to the left.’ It turns out she had seen a chalk line on the ground and lined up on that assuming it was the center.”

DeAnna got her third attempt out of the cage and earned three more attempts with a distance of 73.28m, then got on the podium with a fifth-round toss of 75.41m. It was her first championships medal since claiming Doha gold in 2019, and so a truly lovely moment–but, the question lingers as to how far those first two attempts might have been had she gotten them out of the cage.

Camyrn’s college teammate Anna Purchase, had thrown from a similar cage at the 2022 European Championships, so she was able to give Cam and Mo a heads up going into Budapest. That seems to have helped, as Anna advanced to the final in this, her first Worlds, with a 71.31m qualifying toss, and Camryn made it through all six rounds of the final with no fouls.

With no Brooke or Anita in the final and DeAnna getting off to a rough start, the competition turned into what Mo describes as a “tactical contest.”

“We expected fireworks,” he said afterwards. “Like an MMA fight. I thought it might take 78 meters to get on the podium, so it was important for Camryn to start strong and establish herself.”

That she did, with a 77.22m blast that gave her a three-meter lead on the field. She followed that up with 77.07m in round two.

Between attempts, Mo says they “talked about simple stuff. I just wanted to keep her in her own zone and not have her get too analytical, just help her stay within her mindset, stay engaged, and be ready to respond.”

Mo Saatara and Camryn Rogers in Budapest. Photo courtesy of Mo Saatara.

In the end, she did not have to.

Janee’ Kassanavoid pushed Cam a bit with throws of 76.00m and 76.36m in rounds two and three, but no one besides Janee’, DeAnna, and Camryn touched 75-meters, so it ended up being a “North Americans only” podium.

Kudos, by the way, to Kassanavoid who put on a clinic this year on how to throw your best when it counts the most. She came to Budapest having thrown 76 meters on only two occasions in 2023, once at the Tucson Elite, and again at the fiercely competitive US Championships. 

She struggled in qualifying, opening with 71.04m and a foul before advancing with 72.70m on her third attempt.

But after opening with a foul in the final, Janee’ found her steady and put together a nice series, backing up the two 76m tosses with two more over 75m. 

It was a fine performance under what Mo calls, “the difficult mental conditions of a championships final.”

It’s interesting to note that besides being North American, all three medalists came through the NCAA system.

Mo says that competing in the US collegiate system “really shaped who Camryn is as a competitor. The mental side of competing for an NCAA title is extremely challenging. The regionals teach you how to qualify, and in the final you have to be stable while dealing with adversity. It’s a priceless experience for someone who wants to contend at the World level.”

Cam will head back to Berkeley this fall to continue training with Mo, while Ethan and Dylan get back to work in Kamloops.

Meanwhile, Canadian shot-putter Sarah Mitton, who took silver in Budapest, will be plotting with her coach Richard Parkinson to make it a full out Canadian gold rush in Paris.

More on Sarah in my next newsletter, which will focus on the recent Diamond League final.

Until then, take it easy, eh?

by Dan McQuaid & friends