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…
Making the finals at Worlds
Finishing fourth at the Diamond League final
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
René Sack, coach of two-time World Championship medalist Nadine Müller, and three-time European Championships bronze medalist Shanice Craft, will talk diskus technique in a free Mcthrows.com webinar on Saturday, June 6th at 12:00pm CST.
René will use video of Nadine and Shanice to delve into technical concepts.
He is a fantastic coach and great guy, and this webinar promises to be something special.
Attendees may submit questions throughout René’s presentation. Register here.
In a recent webinar, Vésteinn Hafsteinsson examined the technique of 2019 Discus World Champion Daniel Ståhl. Prior to that presentation, Vésteinn sat for a long interview about his coaching career. This post is the last of four based on that interview. It also includes some comments Vésteinnmadeduring the webinar.
On a July day in 2011, Vésteinn Hafsteinsson put his arm around the broad shoulders of seventeen-year-old Daniel Ståhland offered him a choice. “I said to him,” recalls Vésteinn, “You can keep doing what you are doing or you can decide to be the best discus thrower in the world.”
What he had been “doing” after a youth spent playing ice hockey, was dabbling at throwing the discus.
Daniel was part of a Stockholm athletics club whose membership already included Niklas and Leif Arrhenius, world class discus throwers whom Vésteinn had mentored. The throwing coordinator of that club invited Vésteinn to stop by and work with Daniel, and Vésteinn’s first impression of the young man was that he was big, tall, and perhaps nuts.
“He was throwing into a net in Stockholm, and he was all over the place,” Vésteinn said recently. “He was screaming and laughing, throwing to the left, to the right, straight up.”
Fortunately, Vésteinn is not intimidated by “guys who are odd.” He has never forgotten the “unbelievable passion” that Gerd Kanter exuded at their first meeting, and here was this giant kid displaying a “funny craziness” that made Vésteinn think, “If you could use this energy properly, oh my god.”
Vésteinn stopped by Daniel’s club maybe six times over the next two years. Each time, he was struck by Daniel’s potential, and one day he decided to challenge him to get serious.
So, he asked Daniel to choose.
“He laughed his big laugh,” recalled Vésteinn, “And said ‘Of course I want to be the best.’ So I told him, ‘You must work with me, and be ready because it will take you eight years to reach the top.’”
It would prove to be a significant moment for the sport of athletics, and perhaps for hockey as well. How many opponents might have been obliterated against the boards had Daniel returned to the ice while filling out to his current stature of 6’7”, and 155 kilograms? Fortunately, we will never have to find out.
Vésteinn set about helping Daniel develop strength and effective technique. The greatest challenge, though, was to teach him to throw his best when it counted the most.
“In the beginning,” Vésteinn recalls, “Daniel was not a good competitor. He was a different personality than Gerd. Daniel is a comedian, while Gerd was very serious. But both needed to learn how to win.”
Luckily, one thing Gerd and Daniel had in common was their passion to be the best. “They bought into the concept,” Vésteinn says. “They believed in what I said, and they followed it.”
While coaching both Gerd and Daniel, Vésteinn drew on his own career as a discus thrower, a career in which he struggled mightily to produce his best results in four Olympic Games and five World Championships. “I could use my weakness as an athlete,” he says now, “to be a strong coach to help them mentally.”
Three hard years of training and competing paid off when Daniel drilled a huge PB of 66.89m in 2014, but he showed at the European Championships that he still wasn’t quite ready to compete against the best. His top effort in the prelims was 59.01m, which left him in twenty-fourth place.
He performed much better at the 2015 World Championships, reaching a season’s best 64.73m in the final and finishing in fifth place–one spot behind Gerd. But, instead of building on that performance in 2016, Daniel took a big step backwards. He upped his PB to 68.72m but could not come close to that mark in the biggest competitions. His 64.77m still got him fifth at the Euros, but he dipped to 62.26m and fourteenth place in Rio.
Gerd had endured a similar humiliation at the 2004 Games, finishing nineteenth with a throw of 60.05m–more than eight meters below his season’s best. Then, in 2005, he broke through with a 68.57m bomb at the World Championships that won him the silver medal and gave him the confidence he would need to eventually become World and Olympic champion.
For Daniel, the breakthrough came at the 2017 Worlds, a competition that will be remembered for the size of the medalists (the smallest of the three–Andrius Gudžius–was listed at 6’6” and 300lbs) and the ferocity of the second round in which Mason Finley (6’8”, 350lbs) took the lead with a PB 68.03m, only to be knocked into second by Daniel’s 69.19m, and then into third when Gudžius hit 69.21m. There was no change in the ranking after that, and Daniel had to settle for silver.
It was a frustrating result, but also a turning point as he demonstrated a year later.
I was present for his 2018 rematch with Gudžius at the European Championships in Berlin. Daniel qualified easily with a 67.07m opener in the prelims, but found himself on the brink of disaster in the final with fouls on each of his first two attempts.
It was a crazy night. Berlin was in the middle of a heatwave and the air was heavy with humidity. I remember that at each stop on the subway ride to the stadium, boarding passengers would exclaim “Ooof!” as they stepped into the sweltering cars. But the stadium was packed, and folks were in a raucous mood as this was Germany, this was the European Championships, and this was Robert Harting’s last appearance in the German national uniform.
Daniel had to shut all that out–the noise, the heat, the awful prospect of fouling again–as he stepped into the ring for his third attempt. His toss of 64.20m showed that he’d come a long way since Rio, and lifted him into second place. More importantly, it earned him a full six attempts.
Gudžius responded by knocking the crap out of one. His 67.19m was an impressive toss in that heavy air and threatened to put the competition away.
It would take a hell of a lot of horsepower to launch a discus much farther in that stadium on that night, but horsepower is one thing that Daniel never lacked. His Humvee-sized body contains what Vésteinn refers to as a “Formula One” engine. In round four, he pressed the pedal to the metal and grabbed the lead with a monster throw of 68.23m.
It was a manly effort, and perhaps the farthest throw ever in an outdoor sauna. Once again though, Gudžius was able to respond. In round six, he snatched the gold with a 68.46m bomb.
I spoke with Daniel afterwards (my post about that night’s competition in Berlin is here) and asked him how he’d been able to keep his composure after opening with two fouls.
“It was mental strength,” he replied. “I’m really happy. It was great conditions, and I’m very happy. I was focused all six throws. My goal was to win, but I’m really proud of 68.23m…Now, I prepare to win in Doha.”
And prepare he did.
Daniel came into the 2019 World Championships as the Diamond League champion and world-leader with a season’s best of 71.86m. The challenge, according to Vésteinn, was to handle the pressure of being considered the favorite.
That he ended up winning was a testament to all the years of “traveling and learning.”
The eight-year process that Vésteinn had laid out for Daniel back in 2011 had built him into a performer of such consistency that in his top ten meets of 2019 he averaged 69.94m. So, even on a day when, as in Doha, he struggled to find his rhythm, he was hard to beat.
Last fall, I interviewed several coaches and athletes about the weather conditions at the Worlds. You can find that post here. Bottom line, the oppressive heat made for a very strange situation in Doha. In the days prior to competing, most athletes did not leave their hotel during daylight hours. Even when they ventured out to train at night, the heat quickly sapped their energy. Then, on competition days, those wishing to take early warmup throws outside the stadium (a common routine at a championship meet) had to expose themselves to the brutal heat shortly before reporting to the air-conditioned call room and then being transported into the open-air, but also air-conditioned, stadium.
It was a strange situation, and certainly not one designed to help athletes find a familiar rhythm. The men’s shot putters flourished, with Joe Kovacs, Ryan Crouser, and Tom Walsh all breaking seventy-five feet, but that might have been due to the meat-headed nature of the event. World class putters, once their technique has been fully ingrained, can operate successfully in caveman mode, which makes it easier to block out distractions. Discus throwers, on the other hand, must maintain a more delicate balance between competitive fire and long-limbed relaxation.
Whatever the reason, long throws were in short supply in the men’s disc in Doha. Daniel was the only one to reach the automatic qualifying mark in the prelims, and even though he and Fedrick Dacres had repeatedly demonstrated the ability to throw sixty-nine-meters-plus in stadiums during the 2019 season, only Daniel would break 67.00m in either the prelims or final.
He opened in the final with 66.59m, lost the lead to Austria’s Lukas Weißhaidinger who hit 66.74m, then regained it in round two with a toss of 67.18m. He improved to 67.59m in round three and reached 67.05m on his sixth attempt. Each of those three throws was long enough for the win.
Fedrick ended up taking the silver with 66.94m. Weißhaidinger finished third at 66.82m.
This year, the pandemic has delayed Daniel’s chance to fight for an Olympic medal, but he has continued to train with Vésteinn and a group that includes fellow Doha finalist Simon Pettersson and Jakob Gardenkrans. It is hard to say what the next few weeks will bring, but Vésteinn is hoping that his group will be allowed to host a couple of throwing meets beginning in May.
Beyond that?
Vésteinn puts it this way:
“When you’ve thrown the fourth farthest throw ever, and you have the second best average for ten throws ever, of course the goal is to break the world record. But, as Daniel says, it is not like ordering a pizza.”
Vésteinn also acknowledges that even freakish athletes like Daniel have a narrow window during which world-record distances are possible. By the time they gain the technical mastery and experience to get the most out of their talents, age often begins to take its toll.
He says that if Daniel is going to take down Jürgen Schult’s record of 74.08m, it “has to be done in two years. It is prime time now, and after that it is about getting more medals.”
Hopefully, athletics fans will get a chance to see Daniel chase his massive potential later this summer.
One last note: I want to acknowledge that the 2018 European Championships in Berlin were not only Robert Harting’s final championship appearance, but Gerd Kanter’s as well. He retired shortly thereafter, one of the greatest competitors and nicest dudes ever to chuck the platter.
