Category Archives: Discus

Discus, Meets, Rotational Shot, USATF

The Monday Morning Meathead: August 2nd Edition

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Laulauga Tausaga hit a big PB in Eugene. Photo courtesy of TrackTown USA.

Confidence!

Many throwers have a rough time during their first year as a professional, but in 2022 Laulauga Tausaga made the transition from amateur to pro look easy peasy lemon squeezy by breaking 60 meters in fourteen of her nineteen comps and smashing a PB of 64.49m at the USATF Championships. She also qualified for her second World Championships and first Diamond League final. 

Still, she was not satisfied.

“That’s how it is,” explained John Dagata, Lagi’s coach for the past two seasons. “With high-level athletes, nothing is good enough. When we looked back at her accomplishments in 2022, her reaction was, ‘Why didn’t I medal at Worlds?’”

With another World Championships coming up in 2023, Lagi pushed hard during fall sessions at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Center, where she and Dagata train. By January, according to Dagata, Lagi was “throwing farther than ever,” on a daily basis. 

“Some of the Chinese athletes I coach, who didn’t really know her, saw Lagi throw and were like, ‘How is her PB only 64.49m?’ That’s how good she looked.”

Then, Lagi’s progress was interrupted by, of all things, a bout of gout, the cause of which, according to the Mayo Clinic website, can be hard to pin down.

Coach Dagata says that Lagi had experienced some mild gout-like symptoms in 2022, but never missed a day of practice because of it. Then, one morning in February of this year, she called to say that her ankle was swollen and so “locked up” that she could not walk.

That forced them to shut down her training for several days, and to limit the number of throws she took for the next several weeks. Essentially, Dagata says, they “lost the month of February.”

A 63.92m toss in her season opener at Triton in April was encouraging, but Dagata says that all the lost practice time made Lagi’s technique unstable. Instead of throwing consistently well as she had in January, they started having “one good practice, then one bad practice.”

After Triton, Lagi went 60.43m at the Pacific Coast Invitational, followed by 62.74m at Mt. SAC, and 60.37m at Tucson.

Matters came to a head when she threw 60.34m at the USATF LA Grand Prix in late May.

“We had a serious meeting afterwards,” recalls Dagata. “I told her I was not happy with the way the season was going, that we had to find a way to get consistency back in our training, and that with only a month before USAs, we had to do it immediately.”

Lagi agreed, and they decided to “go backwards to go forward,” which in Lagi’s case meant switching to a “static start” where she would pause for a moment after winding up at the back of the ring. The pause would limit the amount of speed she could create at the start of her throws, but it would also make it easier to keep her balance and hit sound positions as she moved through the ring. 

As is often the case with technical adjustments, this one did not pay immediate dividends. Lagi dropped to 59.84m at a comp in Chula Vista before departing for Europe where she dropped even further to 55.34m in Italy before rebounding to throw 62.62m at the Paris Diamond League meeting. 

Back in the States, she went 58.65m at another Chula Vista comp on June 18th, then 56.61m a week later in New York.

It was about that time, though, that the static start throws began to feel more comfortable. 

“Practices started getting better,” says Dagata. “Then, during the five or six days we were in Oregon leading up to USAs, we were locked in.”

Lagi and Dagata knew that she could throw farther using her regular, more active start, but they decided to stick to the static at USAs. 

Dagata explained that “with the disc, you have to be consistent. If Lagi loses control and starts to rip it out of the back, she might end up with a great throw or it might go 50 meters, and then she starts to doubt herself. Consistency gives her confidence, and the static start gave us the best chance for consistency.”

With Val Allman receiving a Budapest bye as Diamond League champion, the US had four spots to fill in the women’s disc and Lagi used her modified start to stake her claim to one of them. During the first five rounds she went 62.13m, Foul, 62.67m, 60.96m, Foul. That was good enough to ensconce her securely in second place, and when she walked into the ring for her sixth and final attempt, Lagi was guaranteed a spot on the team for Worlds.

That being the case, she and Dagata decided to have another go at using a full windup.

“Her confidence on that last throw was so good,” Dagata says. “She had made the team, and while she was waiting she did a couple of dry throws off to the side and looked really good. Then, she got in and rushed her entry and only used three quarters of the ring. I have no idea how she kept that throw from going into the cage. It was unreal.”

And far.  

A 65.46m PB to be exact.

Which windup will she use in Budapest? 

At the 2022 Worlds, it took 61.21m to get through qualification, a distance that Lagi surpassed twice using the static start at USAs. 

Dagata says they will wait and see how the next couple of weeks of training play out before deciding on their plan of attack for Worlds, but as at USAs, the most important factor will be Lagi’s confidence.

“One thing a lot of people don’t understand,” Dagata explained, “is that athletes like Lagi live their lives by every competition. Most throwers don’t get great funding, and they feel like they are one bad meet from losing what they do get, and that puts them under a lot of pressure. I try to balance that out by keeping a positive outlook and reminding her all the time of the great things she’s done.”

Tom Walsh at last year’s Diamond League final in Zurich. Photo courtesy of me!

Can’t you hear me knocking?

Speaking of maintaining a positive outlook, did anyone else notice that Tom Walsh went 22.58m at the recent London Diamond League meeting? 

That was Tom’s best mark since his 22.90m bomb at the 2019 Worlds, and a sure sign that the man cannot take a hint.

If he could, he’d have accepted by now that Fate has no intention of letting him be the World’s Greatest Shot Putter. To many, that would have been clear after he shattered the World Championships record by 67 centimeters that night in Doha and ended up finishing third.

Tom got another reminder at the 2021 Games when he hit 22.47m–tied for the best ever pre-Crouser throw at an Olympics–and once again finished third. 

He was faced with even more discouragement at the 2022 Worlds when an American sweep kept him off the podium at an Olympics or outdoor Worlds for the first time since he finished fourth in Beijing in 2015.

What keeps him going? In an interview conducted last year, Tom told me that he takes a lot of motivation from proving people wrong. “Plenty of people over my career have told me I’m not the guy,” he explained. “I love showing them I am the guy.”

Tom also credited his support team, two members of which–strength coach Angus Ross and sports psychologist John Quinn–have been with him for years. “They challenge me,” Tom said. “Whether it’s by changing up my training programs or getting me to think outside the box.”

His ultimate goal?

“Being the best thrower of all time.”

And if you think he was taken aback by the rise of 2022 Worlds bronze medalist Josh Awotunde, or by Joe Kovacs breaking 23 meters last September, think again.

Tom says that seeing Kovacs–his elder by three years–hit a big PB, only inspired him more.

“I love it,” he said. “I still want to throw a long way and I still believe I can. I just have to keep knocking at the door.” 

A man in full

For the book about Daniel Ståhl I’ve been working on with Vésteinn Hafsteinsson and Roger Einbecker, we asked some of Daniel’s friends and colleagues to share anecdotes about the Big Fella. Many were kind enough to do so, and I think fans of the sport will enjoy reading these little glimpses into his life and career.

One especially lovely piece came from 2016 Olympic discus champ Chris Harting, who wrote about a night before a meet in Finland when he, Daniel, Simon Pettersson, and Kristjan Čeh waded out into a shallow lake and talked about life in the fading light of a late summer sun.

I thought about Chris and about that piece recently when my wife’s sister who lives in Berlin sent me a link to a newspaper interview he gave last month.

In it, Chris discusses some difficult personal issues he’s dealt with over the past couple of years, and opens up about his battle with depression.

In a world where young men are told by their favorite Youtubers or podcasters or whatever those idiots are called that the way to become popular is to embrace a version of masculinity that Neanderthals would have found regressive, it was refreshing to see Chris speak in such an honest and vulnerable way. And I know that someone, somewhere is going to read that article and realize that if it is okay for a 6’10” inch Olympic champion to seek help, it’s okay for them too.

Discus, Meets, Rotational Shot, Shot Put, USATF

The Monday Morning Meathead: July 19th Edition

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Good things come to those who wait…and wait. Your 2023 USATF women’s shot medalists: Adelaide Aquilla, Maggie Ewen, and Jalani Davis. Photo courtesy of TrackTown USA.

Hurry up and wait

I once helped out at a middle school meet where the person in charge of the discus decided that after each throw, the athlete should remain in the ring until the measurement was recorded. This created much ridiculousness, as those who remembered to follow this new “rule” inevitably got in the way when the guy tried to pull and read the tape, and those who forgot and walked out after their disc landed had their throw nullified. 

I was among several coaches who tried to explain to the man that there was no “stay in the ring until after the measurement” rule and that he’d have a much easier time running the event the normal way, but he refused to listen. He had been put in charge and would manage the ring as he saw fit.

I thought of that gentleman as I watched via the USATF.TV webcast while officials made a hash of the women’s shot at the recent 2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships. Much to the relief of my wife, I’ve reached the point where I expect and forgive the inevitable laser malfunctions and no longer feel compelled to scream, “Just use a damn measuring tape!” at my laptop while watching throws comps.

And there did seem to be laser-induced delays that night in Eugene, but it quickly became clear that something else was contributing to the glacial pace of each round. The camera angle used on the webcast made it possible to see the timer mounted near the ring, and for some reason the officials would not allow a thrower to step in for their attempt until the sixty seconds allotted to the previous thrower had expired. 

The existence of those timers has always struck me as extraneous. Why would a thrower, once their name is called, want to spend the better part of sixty seconds standing there thinking about throwing? That’s what NFL coaches force the other team’s kicker to do when he’s trying to make an important field goal, right? They call a timeout to give the poor bastard time to ponder and worry and get tight. That strategy is called “icing,” and again, it’s something you do to an opponent to mess them up. Why would an athlete want to ice themselves?

The answer is, they don’t. In a normal comp, each thrower is in and out of the ring in just a few seconds, except when the laser glitches and people like me start wishing they’d let the Amish run all major meets. 

But that night in Eugene, the athletes had no choice but to stand by awkwardly watching the timer tick down to zero before entering the ring, which made for a maddeningly slow competition. By my estimate, it took fifty minutes to complete the first three rounds, twice as long as normal.

Afterwards, I messaged a handful of coaches and athletes to ask if they knew whose idea it was to run the women’s shot that way.  

Kyle Long, coach of Maggie Ewen, said that Maggie told him an official showed up as the comp began and–for reasons unknown–ordered the person running the ring to wait the full minute between attempts. 

“We always prepare for something weird at every meet,” he told me. “But I had no idea why they were making everyone wait so long between throws.”

Fortunately, Maggie smashed a 19.76m opener, which made it easy to stay in relaxo mode the rest of the comp, and ended up producing the most consistently excellent series of her career: 19.87m, 19.54m, 19.80m, 19.48m, and 19.92m.

John Smith, who was there coaching Jalani Davis, thought the slow pace was per request of the TV folks, but like Kyle, he had no hard feelings as Jalani’s fourth-round toss of 18.62m earned her a ticket to Budapest.

Kara Winger, who worked all weekend as a member of the broadcast crew, said afterwards that TV did not dictate the pace of the shot comp, which made sense because…have the TV people ever wanted the throwing events to last longer? Not in my lifetime.

Strangely, though, Kara had heard that an official visited the call room prior to the event and asked the putters if they wanted the full minute between each throw. She also pointed out that most throwers would be so focused on themselves and their cues while sitting in the call room that they probably would not have had enough available brain space to process what the official was actually asking them. 

We may never know the true explanation behind the Great Shot Put Slowdown of 2023, but fortunately all the other throwing events were run at the normal pace. Now, if they would just ditch the damn lasers!…Sorry, honey.

Jalani Davis. Photo courtesy of TrackTown USA.

Leveling Up

After winning the NCAA weight title in March, Jalani Davis headed into the outdoor season looking to do some damage in the hammer and shot put. And for a while, things went as planned. 

She finished second at the SEC Championships in both, with throws of 67.27m and 17.94m, and seemed ready to contend for podium space at the NCAA finals in Austin. 

Then regionals happened.

The University of North Florida, site of the East Regional, had recently redone their cage, and in the remodeled version the hammer ring was placed in front of the discus ring. Because of this, the cage door felt closer than normal for the hammer throwers, which bothered some, Jalani included. She lost her rhythm and maybe her composure, and finished eighteenth with a throw of 60.89m.

Jalani’s disappointment carried over to that night’s shot comp, where her best effort of 16.15m put her nineteenth.

Coach Smith assured Jalani that every thrower has tough days, and the experience would benefit her in the long run. “I told her,” he recalled recently, “the more battle scars you accumulate the better you will be in the end.”

A week later, she bounced back, going 67.00m and 18.64m at the Music City Track Carnival. 

Based on that performance, and on the potential he’d seen Jalani display in training, Smith believed she had a chance to make the squad for Budapest.

But he did not say that to Jalani.

Smith worried that any talk of competing for a spot at Worlds might make it impossible for her to relax and find a flow. “Throwing,” he says, “should be a reaction. If you walk into the ring and try to think through a throw, you’re done. You’ve got to learn to be on autopilot, or you’ll never survive in a high-pressure situation.”

Luckily, Jalani went into USAs with the best U23 hammer and shot put marks in the Western Hemisphere, which made her nearly a lock to qualify for the U23 NACAC team. Smith told her to focus on that and never mentioned the possibility of qualifying for Budapest.

He also tried to put Jalani into autopilot mode during practice by having her throw into a net or over a set of bleachers that blocked her view of where the shot landed.

Blinders come in many forms: the shot ring at Ole Miss, with bleachers in place. Photo courtesy of John Smith.

Smith estimates that Jalani launched eighty percent of her practice attempts over the bleachers in the runup to USAs, including every throw during her final training session before heading to Eugene.

Smith’s plan paid off when, after fouling her first attempt in the competition, Jalani belted an 18.53m second-rounder that put her into third place. In round four, she improved to 18.62m. And then, she started to get suspicious.

“I knew,” she said later, “that to make the U23 team I only had to beat one other U23 girl. But then, after my fourth throw, I asked Coach if I’d make the team for Worlds if I stayed in third or fourth place. He didn’t say anything, so I knew that was a ‘yes.’”

The 18.62m held up for third place, so Jalani will be heading this week to Costa Rica for U23 NACACS before returning home to prepare for Budapest.

Not bad for an athlete who was not recruited out of high school. Jalani got herself on the Ole Miss squad by showing up at a practice one day with her father and convincing Smith to give her a chance. 

“I was mad at walk-ons at the time,” Smith recalls. “I’d just had one who had been a problem. But I liked what Jalani’s father had to say. He’s a military guy, she’s a military kid, and they both impressed me.”

Four years later, Jalani is on the team for Worlds. She has also become the first woman ever to throw eighty feet in the weight and sixty in the shot, though Smith says she is still in the developmental stage. “She’s only been spinning in the shot for three years,” he explained. “And it usually takes four years to click. Right now, she can throw 18 meters from a non-reverse, but she’s still getting comfortable with reversing. Year four is when Jessica Ramsey broke through to 20 meters. So, we’ll see.”

In the end, though, the hammer might be her best event. 

Jalani’s current PB is 69.53m, but according to Smith, she is poised for a breakthrough there as well. 

This season, after three-and-a-half years of training the hammer, Jalani threw the 3-kilo implement 82 meters in practice. Smith has had other athletes reach that distance with the 3k, including 2019 World Champion DeAnna Price, 2017 US Champion and two-time Olympian Gwen Berry, and 2013 World Championships finalist Jeneva Stevens, but none did it as early in their career. 

Will Jalani some day follow DeAnna’s path to a World Championships podium? Maybe, but that’s something to think about at a later date. For the rest of this summer, she’ll be on autopilot mode.

Daniel Ståhl in London back in 2017 showing off his first World Championships medal. Photo courtesy of Arwid Koskinen.

Big Man Update

Daniel Ståhl is having a hell of a season with four meets over 70 meters so far, including a best of 71.45m. After a tough 2022 campaign where he finished out of the medals at Worlds and Europeans, what more could you ask?

“I’d like,” Daniel’s former coach Vésteinn Hafsteinsson told me via a Zoom call last week, “to see him throw far outside of Sweden and Finland, which are his favorite places to compete, and to see him beat Kristjan at least one more time before Worlds.”

That would be defending World champ Kristjan Čeh, whose 71.86m toss at the Heino Lipp Memorial gave Daniel the honor of owning the farthest second-place throw (the aforementioned 71.45m) in history. 

Daniel had tagged Kristjan with his only loss of the season three days earlier at the Paavo Nurmi Games, but outside of that comp the big Slovenian had been untouchable. 

Then came last weekend’s Gyulai István Memorial in Hungary, where Daniel defeated all three 2022 Worlds medalists–Kristjan, Mykolas Alekna, and Andrius Gudžius–while taking the win with a throw of 68.98m. 

Right now, Daniel is flourishing under his new coach, Staffan Jönsson, and the men’s discus final in Budapest should be hellacious.

We hope to have Vésteinn’s book about his years with Daniel available later this summer. Maybe just in time to celebrate another World Championships medal.

Discus, Meets, USATF

2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships Preview: 5 Questions about the Men’s Disc

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Sam Mattis with his coach Dane Miller on a day when Sam definitely did not throw like poop. Photo courtesy of Sam’s Instagram page.

Can Sam Mattis stop throwing like doo-doo and win his second national title?

In 2022, Sam Mattis showed himself to be a legit world-class discus thrower by…

  1. Making the finals at Worlds
  2. Finishing fourth at the Diamond League final
  3. Throwing really far (67.19m) in a place that is not California, Arizona, or Oklahoma (he did it in Croatia)

Those three items make Sam’s resumé unique among the current crop of American male discus throwers, and would have denoted him as the clear favorite at the 2023 Toyota USATF Championships held this week in Eugene had he not fallen into a month-long slump.

“He’s been throwing like beep,” Sam’s coach Dane Miller told me recently. “Probably because of the travel.”

Sam’s success in 2022 got him invited to 2023 comps in places as far afield as Qatar, Morocco, Norway, and Finland and, according to Miller, “Sam is so dialed into his patterns of lifting, sleeping and whatever, that it always takes him a while to get back in a groove after he comes home from overseas.”

Luckily, Sam will have had three solid weeks of stateside training by the time the men’s discus comp kicks off at 3:30pm Pacific on Thursday. Dane says that Sam is once again “slamming it” and looks forward to competing for a spot on the US squad for Worlds. 

Prediction: Sam will, in fact, find his mojo and come out on top at the USATF Championships for the first time since 2019.

NCAA discus champ Turner Washington in a serene moment. Photo courtesy of the ASU track page.

Will Turner Washington lose his shirt?

The most memorable moment of the recent NCAA track championships came when Arizona State’s Turner Washington launched a 66.22m missile to win the men’s discus comp, ripped off his shirt, and sprinted over to the stands to celebrate in front of some Arkansas fans who had been razzing him throughout the evening. 

It was a remarkable comeback for Turner who, discouraged by injury and lack of progress, had retired from throwing a year earlier. Luckily, former shot put great Ryan Whiting took over the ASU throws squad and coaxed Turner back into the sport. Now, if he can reach anywhere close to his NCAA-winning mark, he will secure a spot in Budapest.

I have generously offered to travel to Eugene and trash talk Turner during Thursday’s comp to help fire him up, but I have not yet heard back from Whiting or his representatives. Nor have I received an airline ticket from them. 

But I’ll keep checking my inbox.

Prediction: With or without me there slinging insults, Turner will finish in the top three, make his first Worlds team, and celebrate shirtless.

Brian Williams after qualifying for the 2022 Worlds. Photo courtesy of Brian’s Instagram page.

Will throwing fixed-feet fix Brian Williams’ feet?

After hitting 66.14m in 2022, Brian Williams’ best mark so far this season is the 63.54m he threw at the Ironwood Classic last month. He and his coach Ryan Whiting have been working on technical adjustments, and so far they are having more success when Brian stays on the ground as he finishes his throws. This is something that all discus throwers do in training, but most throw farther when they “reverse” or jump on their follow through. 

In Brian’s case, he has occasionally reached 65 meters in practice without reversing, only to suffer a loss in distance when he jumps into his finish.

If Sam Mattis and Turner Washington are on their game, they will likely battle for the top two spots at USAs, but after that the field is wide open. Don’t be surprised if Brian goes fixed-feet for at least one or two rounds in an effort to get into the 64-meter range, which would likely secure him a spot on the team.

Prediction: Brian will eschew the reverse, hug the ground, and make the team.

Wow, and I thought the guys throwing at NCAA’s were old! Nik Arrhenius and child. Photo courtesy of Nik’s Instagram page.

Why is a former Swedish champion throwing in this meet?

That would be Niklas Arrhenhius, a fifteen-time former Swedish champion–five in the indoor shot, three in the outdoor shot, seven in the disc. 

But he was born and raised in the United States, and has long contemplated the idea of competing at a US championships.

“Throwing,” he explained recently, “was always a Swedish thing for me because my dad competed for Sweden. I’m proud of my heritage, and was always glad to represent Sweden at the World and European Championships.”

But there was something about the Olympic Games that got him thinking stars and stripes.

“At the 2008 Olympics,” Nik recalls, “I remember seeing the Dream Team in the cafeteria at the Olympic Village and I thought, ‘I’m not that Swedish. I was born in America. Maybe I should represent the US?’”

If it were only that simple. Nik began seriously pursuing a change of allegiance in 2016, but then the IAAF froze all applications. He filed again in 2019, hoping to qualify for the 2020 US Trials, but found out that competing for Sweden in a dual meet versus Finland that August put the kibosh on the process for three years. 

Now, he’s finally eligible, and on Thursday will make his US Championships debut at the age of 40.

His goal in the comp?

“I’d like to get a season’s best and qualify for the full six throws. With my athletes (Nik coaches at Brigham Young University) we talk about having a ‘fearless goal.’ There’s no point in going into a competition with a goal that makes you anxious, so just pick one that you know you can reach and build from there. For me, that’s getting a season’s best and earning six throws.”

Right now, Nik’s SB stands at 61.72m, the twentieth year in a row he has hit the 60-meter mark.

Does that make him old? Maybe. Determined? Certainly. Worth watching on Thursday at 3:30pm Pacific time? Absolutely.

Prediction: Nik goes 62 meters and celebrates with a nap.

Dallin Shurts will try to make a second surprise podium appearance at USAs. Photo courtesy of the BYU track page.

Speaking of the Swedish guy, how is he at double-tasking?

As mentioned, Nik coaches at BYU. His best thrower is Dallin Shurts, who pulled off a shocker last year by taking second in this meet.  Dallin, an extremely large and affable young man, is in the field again, and Nik is hoping they end up in the same flight. 

“If they split up the field and he’s in the first flight and I’m in the second, I won’t be able to coach him because I’ll be in the holding area waiting to compete. If it’s the other way around, I’ll have to throw then run over to the coaches box. So, I’m hoping we end up together.”

Can Dallin, who has been hobbled by plantar fasciitis much of the season, make another run at the podium? 

“I think he can,” says Nik. “I just want him to hit his cues, and if he does he can go 63-plus, which might be enough.”

However the comp goes for them on Thursday, Nik and Dallin plan to be back in the mix in 2024. 

Nik’s first big senior-level meet was the 2006 European Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden, the site of the 2024 World Masters Championships. 

“It might be fun for me to have my first and last championships be in the same city,” he says.

Prediction: The big blonde will throw well and just miss the podium. Nik will still be proud of him.

Discus, Musings, Shot Put, USATF

The Monday Morning Meathead: June 19th Edition.

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I’ve been traveling a lot and also contemplating how to make progress on a ten-year plan to paint our house, which is now entering it’s thirteenth year. The plan, I mean. But, I’m ready to commit to a weekly piece on the throws which, as is the case with this inaugural edition, may not appear until Monday evening each week. But “Monday Evening Meathead” doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

This photo of, from left to right, a person unknown, Kristjan Čeh, the great Estonian raconteur Raul Rebane, Robert Urbanek, and Daniel Ståhl at the recent Heino Lipp Memorial meeting is courtesy of Robert’s Instagram page from which I stole it.

The Big Man is Back

IN 2019, a year during which Daniel Ståhl was nearly unbeatable, he averaged a best throw of 70.15m in his first six competitions, if we forgive him a No Mark at the Paavo Nurmi Games, which we will. At the end of that season, he was World champion.

In 2021, on the way to Olympic gold, he averaged 68.23m in his first six comps.

Last year, as Daniel turned thirty years old and had to deal with the emergence of Kristjan Čeh (expected) and Mykolas Alekna (not so much) as full-fledged phenoms, that number fell to 67.45m. Unfortunately, those first six meets were a harbinger of things to come as Daniel finished fourth at the 2022 Worlds and fifth at the European Championships.

Will his first six comps of 2023 be a harbinger as well? If so, it might be tough to keep Daniel off the podium in Budapest as his average so far this year is 69.68m.

What accounts for this revival? “He’s having fun again,” says his former coach Vésteinn Hafsteinsson. “Last year, it was hard for him getting beat by Kristjan. Now, he’s over it, and he just wants to do his best to irritate the young guys.”

Also, like real estate, throwing well can sometimes be a matter of location.  Four of Daniel’s first six comps were held in places where he is very comfortable. Two were in Sweden. One took place in Finland, where his mother was born and, according to Vésteinn, “Fourteen thousand people show up to cheer for him.” His most recent outing was the Heino Lipp Memorial in Estonia where Daniel also loves to throw at least in part because, according to his manager  Hans Üürike, Estonians appreciate his sense of humor.

They also appreciate fine discus throwing, and there was plenty to go around at the Heino Lipp. Daniel tossed an SB of 71.45m, the fifth year in a row he’s breached 71 meters…and he finished second.

Kristjan won with a new PB of 71.86m, making Daniel’s 71.45m the farthest second-place throw in history. Finishing third was Fedrick Dacres, who has been on his own revival tour in 2023. He tossed 66.12m and did not come within five meters of the top two spots.

It’s been an exciting season so far for discus fans, with five guys (Daniel, Kristjan, Mykolas, Alex Rose, and Lukas Weißerhaiding) already over 70 meters, and having Daniel back to his old laughing, dancing, bomb-throwing self bodes well for the summer ahead.

And don’t get me wrong when I refer to “location” as having contributed to Daniel’s hot start. As far as Vésteinn knows, none of Daniel’s comps this year have featured especially favorable wind conditions. In fact, on June 11th, he hit 70.93m in a pronounced tailwind in Sollentuna.

Vésteinn, now the Head of Elite Sports in his native Iceland, has always marveled at the Big Guy’s propensity to throw well in any conditions. “When I was competing,” he said recently, “I hated throwing in a tailwind. But guys like Daniel, and Virgilius Alekna when he was at his best, throw the same no matter what. I used to wonder why Daniel didn’t throw 75 meters when I got him into meets in California, but the wind never seemed to help him much. I guess that’s why he doesn’t have the world record and Virgilius doesn’t have the World Record. But they have Olympic gold, and that’s something, isn’t it?”

And Daniel, now training with Staffan Jönsson in Malmö, Sweden, seems determined to have a say in who wins the next one.

Photo courtesy of me.

Stand by Me

I’ve been a high school throws coach for thirty years, and I’m still trying to figure out the ideal way to interact with my athletes during competitions. 

There have been rare occasions when one of my kids has made a lousy throw and come to me for advice and I’ve said exactly the right thing.

 “Get off your left!” or “Run away from the disc!” 

They’ve followed my suggestion and crushed their next attempt and I’ve walked away wondering if I am in fact the Greatest Coach Ever.

Usually, though, my mid-comp suggestions seem to do more harm than good and I walk away wondering why I didn’t just keep my mouth shut.

A decade ago, I came across a book by Sian Beilock, a cognitive scientist and currently the president of Dartmouth College, titled Choke: What The Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To. In it, she explains the impediments that keep us humans from performing at our best when we want to the most. After reading Choke, I decided that the best thing I could do for my throwers during meets was–as I’d suspected–to leave them alone. Any spontaneous bits of advice I might throw at them, no matter how well-intentioned, were likely to get them thinking rather than flowing and thus make it more difficult to produce an optimal throw.

But, around the time Choke came out–again, we’re talking maybe ten years ago–I had the opportunity to attend the NCAA Championships, and I noticed that most throwers there spoke with their coaches between every attempt. I saw this again when I traveled to New York for the 2013 Adidas Grand Prix meet and watched Sandra Perković interact with her coach, Edis Elkasević. As with the NCAA throwers, Sandra checked in with Edis after every throw. Once, she had to just about steamroll an official who tried to prevent her from crossing the track to reach Edis. The official wisely backed down, and Sandra ended up throwing 68.48m that day. Later in the season, she won a World title to go with the Olympic gold she’d captured in 2012, so it seemed like she had a pretty good idea of how to “get it right” when it counted most.

This confused me.

On the one hand, Sian Beilock presented a compelling case against giving an athlete technical advice during a comp. On the other hand, Sandra Perković was ready to truck an official if she had to in order to confer with her coach between attempts. So, was there an ideal way to interact with athletes as they competed? Should I leave mine alone? Or should I talk to them between every attempt? And if I do, is there a certain kind of advice or way of delivering advice that works best?

I thought about these questions again last month at the 2023 USATF LA Grand Prix. As you may have heard, that Ryan Crouser fella had a pretty good day in LA. He came in wanting to break Randy Barnes’ Ducky Drake Stadium record of 23.12m, set in 1990, which had also been the World Record until Ryan went 23.37m at the 2021 Olympic Trials, and he ended up doing much more.

Ryan had been experimenting with his technique a bit over the past few months, and he was certainly not attempting to peak in May with the World Championships three months away, but remarkably, he’s at a level where knocking off Barnes’ stadium record seemed like a reasonable early-season goal in spite of the fact that only three humans–Ryan, Barnes, and Joe Kovacs–had ever thrown that far.

As warmups for the shot played out on a beautiful LA afternoon at the Ducky, I noticed that Mitch Crouser, Ryan’s father and coach, was present, and that Ryan ambled over to speak with him regularly.

I really wanted to eavesdrop on their conversation to get some insight into how Mitch interacted with Ryan during the comp, but politeness dictated that I keep my distance.

Mitch and Ryan discuss. Photo courtesy of an unidentified stalker.

The one comment I heard clearly was by Ryan after he took out Barnes’ record on his first attempt with a 23.23m bomb from a static start.

“Well,” he said as he approached his father near the stands along the right foul line. “I just did everything wrong that I’ve been working on in practice.”

Whatever corrections he and Mitch made seemed to work, as Ryan improved to 23.31m on his next attempt, which got folks wondering if he might just bang one off the wall at the back of the landing pit–a distance of 24 meters.

He fell off a bit in round three with a pedestrian 22.94m, after which he and Mitch again conferred.

Then Ryan got back in the ring and launched a new World Record of 23.56m. Funny thing, the laser had it at 23.58m, but apparently World Records still have to be measured Amish-style with a steel tape, and that knocked off two centimeters.

A photo showing the distance between Ryan’s new World Record toss and the wall at the back of the shot put landing pit courtesy of UCLA throws coach Sean Denard.

Either way, it was an historic performance, and I was dying to get Mitch’s take on it, particularly regarding his interactions with Ryan during the comp.

He graciously agreed to a phone call a few days later, and one thing he emphasized right away was that he and Ryan do not have a typical coach/athlete relationship. 

“I started coaching Ryan when he was in grade school,” Mitch explained. “Then all the way through junior high and high school. And when he was looking at where to go to college, that was part of the equation. Wherever Ryan ended up, they had to be comfortable with me being involved.”

Believe it or not, that was a dealbreaker for some programs, but the Texas staff agreed, and during his time in Austin, Ryan would regularly send Mitch videos of his practice throws.

“Then, when Ryan moved to the Training Center at Chula Vista, he worked with Mac Wilkins, and I know Mac really well, so I’d go there and work with Ryan for maybe a week at a time.”

Bottom line, being Ryan’s father and coaching him for something like two decades has given Mitch what he terms a “deeper understanding” of Ryan than most coaches have of their athletes.

Another unique aspect of coaching Ryan is that, in addition to his remarkable talent, he has developed his own thorough understanding of the event and what he needs to do to make the shot go far. Actually, “understanding” is probably not the right word. For sure, Ryan is a dedicated student of the sport, but it’s his feel of what works and what doesn’t that sets him apart.

“The great throwers,” says Mitch, “each have their super power. For Joe, it’s his strength. With Tom Walsh, it’s his incredible speed. But for Ryan, it’s his instant recall of the feel of every throw. Because of his ability to feel what went right and what went wrong with each attempt, and because we’ve worked together for so long, at meets I’m more of a sounding board for him than anything else.”

There was a time earlier in Ryan’s career when Mitch found himself offering Ryan different bits of advice during competitions, but that is no longer the case. 

“With so many distractions at big meets, it’s not a good idea to say too much. Sometimes, I’ll suggest one simple cue, which can be valuable because it can help focus you and, if it’s the right cue, it can fix so many other things. But Ryan is to the point now where there aren’t usually a lot of things to fix.”

According to Mitch, Ryan’s comment after the 23.23m opener was indicative of this. “Five years ago, if he felt like a throw was way off, it probably was. But now, his technique is so stable that if one little thing is off it might feel like a lot to him, but it can still be a pretty good throw.”

One change they made after the 23.23m was for Ryan to switch immediately to full “Crouser slide” mode, or as Mitch calls it his “step across” technique.

“Our plan going in was to take two or three throws with a static start, but after his opener we jumped right to using the step across. He’d never fully clicked with it in a meet, but after he went 23.31m he told me it felt good and there was more there.”

On the 23.56m, Ryan knew he was in business as soon as he shifted left. It was the same feeling he’d had on his first World Record in Eugene in 2021.

The aspect of Ryan’s development that Mitch seems most proud of is his ability to produce big throws during competitions. “In college,” he says, “Ryan couldn’t do that. He’d have big practice throws, then throw poorly in a meet. It’s taken him a long time to develop the skill of throwing his best in competition.”

One key has been endless hours spent building stability in his technique. Now, according to Mitch, Ryan will sometimes put a cone at 20 meters and “drop a dozen throws on it.” 

As to the future, Mitch refers to the current situation in the men’s shot as a “perfect storm.” 

“Joe, Tom, or Ryan by themselves probably wouldn’t have pushed the event to the level they have. But together, they’ve made 23 meters like 22 meters used to be. I wonder if ten years from now, people will look back on this time and be amazed.”

That seems likely. In the meantime, it seems the key to knowing what to say to an athlete during a competition is to build a relationship with them that allows you to give them what they need, whether that be a simple cue or just a sympathetic ear.

A Shameless Plug

Full disclosure, I have a selfish reason for rooting for Daniel Ståhl. My friend Roger Einbecker and I have collaborated with Vésteinn on a book about the Big Man’s career from the time they started working together through the Olympic triumph in 2021.

A possible cover for our upcoming book.

Daniel is a remarkable dude, and I think throws fans and sports fans in general will enjoy this inside look at one athlete’s path to the top of his sport. We hope to make it available soon as both an ebook and book book.

Stay tuned!

Discus, Javelin, Meets

Tokyo Tidbits

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Ambition Accomplished

Rachel Dincoff’s first experience in the sport of track and field was as a 200-meter runner. She recalls being “relatively” fast, not “crazy fast,” and since she was tall for her age someone suggested she try the discus.

That was in the seventh grade.

She liked the discus just fine, and after participating in a few meets, decided to make it her life’s work.

“I will,” she informed her teachers, “be doing this in the Olympics some day.”

For that to happen, though, Rachel had to get really good at the discus. Not relatively good. Crazy good.

But for a long time, that did not appear likely. She did not break one hundred feet in middle school, and her high school PB was 143’7”. Val Allman, by way of comparison, she threw 184’2″ in high school.

After a year at Indiana University Purdue University – Fort Wayne (IPFW), Rachel transferred to Auburn where she put together a relatively good collegiate career scoring a ton of points for the Tigers, and making Second-Team All-American in the shot and disc. She graduated in 2016 with a PB of 55.80m and a burning conviction that she could be a great thrower if she could just hang in there long enough.

Meanwhile, Sandra Perkovic won the Olympics that year with a throw of 69.21m.

Rachel persuaded former world class discus thrower Doug Reynolds to become her coach, and began making the two-and-a-half hour drive to Tuscaloosa (Reynolds coached at the University of Alabama at the time) four days a week.

After a year, Reynolds accepted the head job at the University of New Mexico and offered to help Rachel find another coach. But Rachel knew that Reynolds shared her belief in her potential, and she was not ready to part ways.

“What day would you like me to report to New Mexico?” she asked.

She broke the sixty-meter barrier for the first time in 2018–a major milestone for a discus thrower–but a year later, after tinkering with her technique to “make it look like other throwers,” she lost her feel and fouled out of the US Championships. 

For someone trying to hang on in the sport and maybe qualify for a bit of funding to supplement her earnings as a bartender/waitress/retail salesperson, that was a disaster.

But she and Reynolds went back to the desert and used the Covid year to hone a technical approach that felt comfortable for her and would–they hoped–hold up under the stress of a big competition.

Their work paid off when she surpassed the Olympic qualifying distance with a throw of 64.41m in May, but the real test came during the finals at this year’s Trials, by far the most stressful moment of her career.

According to Reynolds, “Not a single one of her warm up throws was any good. She fouled her first competition throw, which was a duck, threw a pop-up fifty-seven meters, then fouled the third one.” 

“Those were not,” Rachel said afterwards, “the throws I imagined myself having here.”

That second throw–it was actually 57.74m—bought her three more, but she entered round four in seventh place.

Reynolds says that adrenaline was causing her to rush her entry. “She was a little anxious into and off of the corner, and wasn’t setting up her drive phase really well. She has a tendency to let her left arm pop up when she gets excited, and that makes her technique too rotational. She has to stay down and drive into the ring.”

He reminded Rachel about the left arm, and that simple cue did the trick as she moved up to fourth place with a toss of 59.35m. A throw of 60.21m in round five vaulted her into third, but she fouled her final attempt then had to stand by and wait. Long story short, if Kelsey Card and Whitney Ashley both jumped ahead of her on their final throws, Rachel would be off the squad for Tokyo.

They did not, and now Rachel is one of only thirty-four women in the entire world who will get to throw the discus at the Tokyo Games. Now that’s crazy.

Festival of Javs

Tom Pukstys believes that under the right conditions, people will throw the javelin far.

Those conditions include summer weather, fervent fans, and an enthusiastic announcer. All of those elements were present at the American Jav Fest in beautiful East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, a couple of weeks ago, and the results were outstanding.

Thirty-three percent of the entire field, according to Pukstys, produced PRs.

One of them, Michael Shuey, ended up ripping his shirt off, an appropriate response to breaking the eighty-five-meter barrier in front of a couple of dozen family members.

The atmosphere. The relatives. The fact that Curtis Thompson had just jumped ahead of him into first place with a toss of of 81.04m. All this, according to Pukstys, factored into Shuey’s breakthrough.

“When he stepped up for his last throw, the table was set,” says Pukstys, “and he went to dinner. He ran faster, pushed himself to the limit, and just whaled on that throw.”

“Where did that come from?” he asked Shuey aftwards.

“I don’t know,” replied Shuey. “I just had it inside me.”

Pukstys is optimistic that Shuey’s breakthrough is just that and not a one-off.

‘I think Michael’s got a great chance of throwing that again in Tokyo,’ he opined. “And Curtis is in eighty-five meter shape as well. He’s going to get mad and show us what he’s made of.”

In an ordinary year, shirtless Shuey would have been the highlight of the weekend, but this is no ordinary year. For the first time in forever, an American woman is among the javelin favorites going into an Olympic Games.

That woman is Maggie Malone, and after lofting a few (in the words of Pukstys) “mediocre” warm up throws, she crushed her first attempt in the competition.

When it landed, she looked at Tom and said, “That’s really far.”

“Yes,” he replied. “We are going to have to get you drug tested.”

The throw was 67.40m, a new American record…if Pukstys could arrange a drug test within the required ninety minutes. With the help of a local doctor, the good folks at USADA, and the staff at a nearby hospital, they managed to pull it off.

If Malone can reproduce that throw in Tokyo, the next time she gets drug tested she may well have a gold medal hanging from her neck.

“No one is better than her mentally right now,” says Pukstys. “I think she’s capable of a world record.”

Village People

I was under the impression that athletes and coaches would be allowed very little freedom of movement in the Olympic village due to Covid restrictions, but apparently that is not the case.

A coach who is currently there in the village told me that other than the mask-wearing and daily testing requirements, life at this Olympic Games is not much different than others he has attended.

Folks are free to move about and mingle with competitors from other countries, including in a cafeteria large enough to hold hundreds of diners.

How this will affect the issue of contract tracing when an athlete tests positive, as the American pole vaulter Sam Kendricks did yesterday, remains to be seen.

Stay tuned.

Discus, Meets

The Olympic Trials Women’s disc: A Coronation and a Controversy

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Val Allman came into Eugene as the defending two-time national champ in the discus, so she was already the queen of the event in this country, but her winning distances of 63.55m in 2018 and 64.34m in 2019 were less than regal, nothing like the sixty-nine-meters-plus throws that Croatia’s Sandra Perković and Cuba’s Yaime Pérez had produced in winning World and Olympic gold over the past ten years. 

They are the sovereigns of the sport at the world level, and for Val to ascend to their station she would need to one, start popping some huge throws, and two, demonstrate that she could throw big in a stadium under pressure. 

She took care of that first item last August with a 70.15m bomb that broke the American record, but that toss came at a throwers meet in Idaho which, in terms of pressure and atmosphere, is nothing like an Olympics or Worlds. That 70.15m was like a pro golfer carding a 67 on a Korn Ferry Tour event–impressive, but do it on a Sunday at the Masters and then we’ll talk.

Val showed signs that she might be ready to go big on the big stage when she made the final at the 2019 Worlds and then returned to Doha this May and took out both Pérez and Perković with a solid 65.57m toss–impressive because it was done overseas in a stadium against top competition.  

(Note: Do not be confused if you look up the Diamond League results and see Val listed as having placed second. She threw farther than everyone else at that meet but was denied the win by a new format instituted by the Diamond League seemingly to kill interest in the sport. I’ll touch on this more at a later date.)

Last week in Eugene, Val’s training sessions generated some intriguing gossip. I heard that one practice featured multiple throws over sixty-seven meters. Another began with numerous attempts rifled into the cage..followed by multiple throws over sixty-five meters. 

My spies also tell me that the ring at Heyward is very, very slick. Sometimes, the top throwers like it that way. But, sometimes an unusually fast surface can get in the head of even the best of the best and sow a little doubt. 

There would be pressure at the Trials, even for a clear favorite like Val. How would she respond? On Friday, in the qualification round, the throwing world got a chance to see.

The NBC live feed showed a few warm up throws before Val’s flight, and I noticed that she caged her final attempt. I don’t know how many warm ups she took. In 2019, she told me that she had developed the habit of taking only two, as that is all you get at some of the bigger comps. Assuming she did that on Friday, she had at most one decent throw prior to the competition. Stepping into the ring in a high pressure meet with your ears still ringing from the sound of your final warm up throw whanging into the cage cannot be good for one’s sense of well being, and when Val produced a round-one clunker that was not even worth marking, I started to wonder.

I’ve heard from many throwers that the pressure of a qualification round can be ghastly. The first women’s discus flight in Eugene provided a clear and awful illustration when Laulauga Tausaga, like Val a finalist at the Doha Worlds, went three fouls and out. 

With two throws left to earn her way to Saturday’s final, was Val starting to feel the pressure?

In round two she stepped in and smashed a Trials record of 70.01m, so…apparently not.

She passed her final qualification attempt, then on Saturday picked up where she’d left off. Her series of 69.45m, 69.92m, 66.36m (get that poop out of here!), 68.55m, 68.46m, foul, in a stadium, under pressure, makes her–in my opinion–the favorite to win gold in Tokyo.

True, there was nobody like Perković or Pérez to contend with on Saturday. The second place finisher was Micaela Hazlewood, who came up big with a PB of 62.54m–a fantastic throw, but one that posed no threat to Val. Again, though, I’ve spoken with some fine throwers who say that there is no pressure quite like the pressure at the Trials. Joe Kovacs touched on it after the men’s shot final on Friday night, saying that it will be easier for him to “go crazy” and smash some huge throws in Tokyo now that the burden of getting through the Trials has been lifted.

So, if Val can put together a series like that in Hayward Stadium (site of the 2022 Worlds, by the way) in the pressure cooker of the US Trials…well, all hail the queen.

And now the matter of who will join Val in Tokyo.

Back in the day, the key for an American track and field athlete to make the Olympic team was to achieve the Olympic standard set by World Athletics (formerly the IAAF) and to finish in the top three at the Trials. An athlete who finished in the top three but who had not achieved the Olympic standard during the set qualification window would be replaced by the next lowest Trials finisher who had hit the standard. 

This kind of thing never happened in events like the shot put where many competitors would have already achieved the Olympic standard prior to the Trials, and where you’d have to throw well above that standard anyway to have any chance of a top-three finish at the Trials. So, when the event ended, you knew that those three athletes out there struggling through a victory lap were the ones who would represent the US in the Olympics.

But in events like the javelin and, in some years, the hammer, where there were not a lot of Americans with the Olympic standard, things could get tricky.

Often, the qualification window extended a month or so beyond the Trials, so top-three finishers who had not hit the Olympic mark would go “standard hunting” in sanctioned meets whenever and wherever they could find them. If those standard-hunters failed, it opened the door for a lower Trials finisher to make the team provided they had achieved the Olympic mark. 

That made things a bit complicated for the athletes in those events and for fans of throwing, but one thing we all hung onto was the importance of hitting the Olympic standard.

The situation became a bit more muddied this year because after the 2016 Olympics, World Athletics made some changes in the Olympic qualifying process. They raised the Olympic standards to a borderline ridiculous level–for example, 77.50m in the men’s hammer, a distance that might get someone on the podium in Tokyo–and started compiling a points system that would carry equal weight as the qualifying standards. Athletes receive points for competing in sanctioned meets–with the number of points awarded depending on the quality of the meet. I assume they did this to encourage athletes to compete in a lot of meets rather than hitting the standard early in the qualification window and then laying low until the Games.

Now, any thrower coming into the Trials having either achieved the standard or holding a spot in the top thirty-two in the World Athletics point rankings would be considered as having qualified for the Games. 

If someone finished in the top three in Eugene but had not hit the Olympic mark and was not ranked in the top thirty-two, they could be replaced on the team by the next highest Trials finish who had done one or both of those things.

In the women’s discus, Val, Laulauga, Rachel Dincoff and Whitney Ashley had each achieved the Olympic qualifying mark of 63.50m. Kelsey Card had not, but she was ranked twenty-third on the World Athletics table. And this year, for the first time ever, that ranking carried equal weight with the qualifying standard.

So, when Lagi did not advance to the final, the contenders for Tokyo came down to Val, Rachel, Whitney, and Kelsey, along with anyone who might grab a spot in the top three and throw at least 63.50m in the process.

When the dust cleared on Friday night, Val and Rachel had cemented their spot on the team by finishing in the top three, but with Micaela possessing neither the Olympic standard or a ranking in the top thirty-two, the door was opened for either Kelsey or Ashley to take the third spot on the Tokyo squad.

Kelsey, by finishing ahead of Ashley, appears to have won that spot.

And that has caused some confusion.

Ashley, a veteran of the old standards-based system, assumed that she had made the team and this morning expressed her consternation in a video posted to Twitter.

Meanwhile, Micaela and her coach, Keith McBride, believe that she has until July 1st to either throw 63.50m in a sanctioned meet or to compete in however many meets it takes to move her into the top thirty-two on the points rankings. She currently sits fiftieth.

Stay tuned. More updates to follow!

Discus, Javelin, Webinar

Three McThrows.com Presentations Available on Coachtube

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Presentations by three of the best throws coaches in the world are now available for purchase on Coachtube.

In one, René Sack, German women’s national discus coach, breaks down the form of multiple Euro Champs medalist Shanice Craft and multiple World Champs medalist Nadine Müller. René is fantastic coach, and this is a rare chance to hear his insights into the art of discus throwing.

You will find René’s presentation here.

Next up, we have Mike Barber, coach of javelin World Champ Kelsey-Lee Barber. Using video and still images, Mike examines Kelsey’s technique and discusses various aspects of training a javelin thrower.

Mike’s presentation is here.

Finally, we have a special presentation by German men’s national discus coach Torsten Lönnfors titled, “Youth Discus Training in the German Athletics Federation.”

In this lecture, Torsten, the coach of 2016 Olympic champ Chris Harting, explains the process used by the German federation to produce an unparalleled string of successful discus throwers. You may find Torsten’s presentation here.

Discus, Webinar

René Sack Discus webinar now on Coachtube

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René Sack, the German national women’s discus coach, recently appeared on a Mcthrows.com webinar to share some thoughts on the fine art of discus throwing. René broke down video of two of his top throwers, World Championship medalist Nadine Müller and European Championship medalist Shanice Craft, and answered questions about technique and training.

That webinar is now available on Coachtube.

The Germans do the discus better than anybody, and coaches at all levels will find René’s insights to be very useful. Don’t miss this chance to improve your understanding of the event!

Discus, Rotational Shot, Shot Put, Webinar

“Rotational Throwing” with Andy Bloom and Coach Scott Bennett now on Youtube

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On June 20th, one of America’s best ever shot/disc throwers Andy Bloom, and his coach Scott Bennett joined us on a Mcthrows.com webinar titled “Rotational Throwing.”

The guys broke down video of some of Andy’s best throws and revealed the technical concepts that allowed him to reach PB’s of 21.82m and 68.46m.

It was a fun and informative chat! You may access it here.

Discus, Rotational Shot, Shot Put, Webinar

Free webinar coming June 20th “Rotational Throwing with Scott Bennett and Andy Bloom”

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Andy Bloom, one of history’s greatest shot/disc doublers, and his coach, Scott Bennett, will appear on a free Mcthrows.com webinar Saturday, June 20th at 12:00pm CST.

After winning the 1996 NCAA title in both events, Andy and Scott had trouble deciding which he should focus on as a pro, so they stuck with both. He ended up with PB’s of 21.82m and 67.46m in a marvelous career that took him all over the world, including to the Sydney Olympics where he finished fourth in the shot.

In this presentation, Andy and Scott will break down Andy’s technique and talk about their journey together.

Attendees will be able to submit questions throughout the webinar. Register here.