If you enjoy roller coasters, I encourage you to check out Laulauga Tausaga’s career stats on her World Athletics profile page. Let’s start with 2019 when she made a huge breakthrough by winning the NCAA title, a huger breakthrough by making the US team for the Doha Worlds, a monumental breakthrough by throwing a 63.94m PB in qualifying there…and then fouled all three throws in the final. In 2021, she finished second at the NCAA…but did not record a mark at the Olympic Trials. In 2022, she threw 64.49m at the US Championships to finish second and qualify for the Worlds in Eugene where she once again advanced to the final…only to go 56.47m, 55.93m, foul, and finish twelfth. The following year, she made the final at the Worlds in Budapest…then threw a 4-meter PB and won the damn thing! Last season, after opening with a solid 65.38m in April, she struggled most of the summer and had another disastrous Olympic Trials where, as in 2021, she did not record a mark.
Last weekend, Lagi began her 2025 campaign with a solid 62.85m for the win at the Florida relays. This week, she will appear for the first time at the Throw Town World Invitational in Ramona, Oklahoma, where Joe Frontier and I will serve as commentators on a broadcast produced by the fine folks at Throws University. In this interview, she reflects back on a difficult 2024 season and expresses optimism about finally finding the consistency she has worked so hard to achieve.
It had to be tough on you to struggle last year after having such an epic 2023 season.
After 2023, a lot of people were looking for me to do something amazing last year, but I was just craving consistency. I knew those big throws at Worlds and in the Diamond League final were outliers. Not that I wouldn’t be able to reach those distances again, but what I really wanted was to put together a season where I was always hitting 62 to 64 meters no matter what. But a lot of things changed last year. My coach, John Dagata ended up moving to the Bay area while I stayed in San Diego and did a lot of training on my own. Both of us were very busy and it was sometimes difficult to set up sessions where he could coach me over Facetime. I would go to him for training camps, and we did our best, but after a while I had to face the fact that it wasn’t working.
After the two meets in April in China (Note: Lagi went 60.61m to finish tenth at the Xiamen Diamond League meeting, then no-marked a week later in Suzhou), I was like, “We are in crisis mode.”
My training was going better later in the summer, but I still wasn’t consistent. I knew I could make the team for Paris, but the other girls got it done that day and I didn’t. Missing out on the Olympics put me in a position to look at my career and say, “Do we want to do this again? Do we want to go through another season of craving consistency and not finding it?” There had to be a better way to move forward.
And that’s when you started thinking about making some changes?
After the Olympic Trials, I decided to end my season. Someone told me at the time that it was a stupid move, but how was that stupid if I wasn’t feeling right physically or mentally? No amount of, “You got this!” was going to make it better, so I took six weeks off, sat down and was like “Alright, this was the second team you haven’t made. This was the third season in a row of trying to find consistency.”
I did some soul searching. I was craving the kind of consistency I had in college in 2019 when on my worst days I still usually threw 58 or 59 meters. Since then, I’d had too many meets where I was throwing like 55 meters. I took six weeks off, then told Dagata I was ready to get back on the horse, but there were things I needed to do to actually ride it and not let it take me wherever. I couldn’t afford to live in Oakland, and I wasn’t in an emotional state to drop everything and move anyway. Some athletes might have done it, but I’m an emotional thrower, and if I don’t feel comfortable it affects my training. I wanted to stay closer to home, and I told Dagata I wanted to bring on my high school coach Jorge Reyes, so I’d have someone to be here with me to bounce ideas off of and to give me immediate feedback. I realized that throwing was a social sport for me, and I thrived around other people. In 2024, I was alone for probably eighty percent of my training, and that just didn’t work. I had stayed close with Jorge through college and my pro years, and he was always easy to communicate with and good to bounce ideas off of. I did that with teammates in college. When the coach said something, I might ask the other throwers, “Do you understand what he’s saying?” I just always enjoyed training in a place where I had other people to interact with.
So it helped having Coach Reyes around, but I was also thinking back to my time at Iowa. I had three amazing years throwing for Eric Werskey, and we kept in touch after he took the job at Florida after the Olympic Trials in 2021.
After the 2024 season, I got to a point where I felt a little lost in the situation I was in, so I sat down with Coach Reyes and told him I was considering contacting Werskey and asking him to work with me again. I went back and forth on it and couldn’t make up my mind, and I must have been driving Coach Reyes crazy, because one day after practice he gave me an ultimatum. He looked at me and said, “You are going to call me tonight and tell me what you’re doing. You are going to make a decision and we are going to move on from there and never talk about this again.”
So that’s what I did. I went home and made my decision.
Which was?
I decided to ask Coach Werskey to take over my training. But first, I had to talk to Dagata. We won a medal together, and I respect him as a coach, but the situation just wasn’t working for me. So I told Dagata, then I had to reach out to Werskey. I guess I probably should have called him first, but…
Anyway, I called Werskey and at first I avoided asking him what I wanted to ask him. I was like, “How are you? How is everything at Florida?” Finally, I got around to it and asked if he’d be my coach for the 2025 season.
He said he would, so we set it up where I still work with Coach Reyes, but we send Eric videos right after practice and he gives me feedback every day as soon as he can. Maybe a text message. Maybe a voicemail in our coaching chat. “Hey, here is what I see…” Those quick responses and Eric and Coach Reyes’ ability to work together have made a big difference for me. Over the course of the last few months, I’ve seen so much growth. And I’ve been able to make it to Florida around once a month to work with him in person.
Are you excited to get a chance to compete at Throw Town?
Yes. I’ve never been there before, but I’m excited to see how I do in the wind. I know people freak out about “wind this” and “wind that,” but let’s be real. Isn’t that why we go to meets like Triton? I actually prefer less wind most of the time because if you have a strong wind and don’t find your rhythm it will eat you. But sometimes the wind can also show you what’s possible, like last year with Joe Brown and Veronica Fraley. They both threw well at Throw Town then ended up in the Olympics, so are you going to tell me those throws in Oklahoma weren’t real?
Because you won in 2023, you have a bye for this year’s Worlds, right?
I do have the bye for Tokyo, and it probably saved my career. It was crushing not to make it to the Olympics last year, and during those six weeks after the Trials I spent a lot of time contemplating whether or not I was done. But then I’d think, “Well, I have the bye, so I might as well keep going and see how much ass I can kick before I give it up.”
Note: The World Invitational will take place at Throw Town from April 10-13. Check out Throws University for a livestream featuring Joe Frontier and yours truly as commentators!
Rachel Dincoff at the 2021 Olympic Trials. Photo Courtesy of USATF.
In 2021, Rachel Dincoff came from nowhere–well, New Mexico anyway–to seize a spot on the US team for the Tokyo Olympics. She’d moved to America’s 36th most populous state three years earlier to work with Coach Doug Reynolds, and her sacrifice–New Mexico is home to 47 different types of snakes for god’s sake–had finally paid off. She followed that success by making the US team again in 2022, this time for the World Championships, and as she prepared for the 2023 season, Rachel had reason to believe that her dream of becoming one of the world’s top discus throwers might be coming true.
Then disaster struck. And re-struck. And struck again.
I’ll let Rachel tell the story, but suffice it to say that when she enters the ring next week at the World Invitational in Ramona, it will be a meaningful moment for her and for the sport to which she has given so much.
The last time I saw you was in Eugene for the 2022 Worlds. You finished your season a few weeks later at the ISTAF meet in Berlin, and have not competed since! What happened?
In early March of 2023, I was back in Florida where I live after doing a training camp with Doug in Kansas, where he coaches now. I’d been sick for a few days, and was still not feeling well when I got up for a Sunday morning workout. My intuition told me to take a rest day, but the athlete inside of me said, “No! You must work out!” I was doing a plyometric exercise and Boom! It felt like someone had thrown something and hit me in the back of the leg.
It’s hard to say with an injury like that if it happened in the moment or it had been building over time, but I knew right away it was serious. My boyfriend, Carl Lawson, was in the gym with me. He’s a pro football player and he’d torn his Achilles a couple of years earlier. He scooped me up, put me on a bench and did a Thompson test on my leg, and he could tell right away I’d torn mine. I was in surgery three days later.
That must have been devastating, with another World Championships coming up in 2023, and the Olympics in 2024.
I was actually pretty optimistic at first. Carl and I live in south Florida, which is a big football community, and we knew players who’d recovered from a torn Achilles in the space of a year. Carl had done it himself. He tore his Achilles in August of 2021, had to have two surgeries, and still made it back for the 2022, so I saw no reason why I couldn’t do the same thing and recover in time to compete for a spot in Paris.
But a couple of months into my recovery, I felt like I still didn’t have a strong connection down there. An Achilles tear takes time to heal, but even after five months of hard work, I wasn’t making progress, and I started to feel the clock winding down on my chances to get ready for 2024. It was the most stressed I’d ever been. I just couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t getting better. I’d had an uncomfortable experience with a medical professional who was pulling on my ankle at an early stage, something which I now know should not have been done. But I couldn’t say for sure if that caused a setback, or if I was just pushing too hard in rehab. Finally, I went back to Dr. O’Malley in New York, who had done my surgery. He examined me and saw that my Achilles needed to be repaired again!
The difficult conversation this time was whether he should take part of my hamstring to repair the Achilles or use tissue from a cadaver. Carl had done it with his hamstring, and using your own tissue is better in some ways, so that’s what I chose to do. But then I had an MRI in the morning before the second surgery, and it showed that the tendon wasn’t too badly torn, and they said they could probably fix it using the cadaver tissue, which would make for a shorter recovery period because I wouldn’t also be dealing with weakness in my hamstring. So that’s what we chose to do.
And then…?
Four months later I started showing signs that my body was rejecting the cadaver tissue.
So, in December of 2023, I had my third surgery. They took, I believe, seven inches of part of my hamstring and also a tendon from my foot and used that to repair my Achilles.
How were you able to keep it together through all that?
I did a pretty good job of staying positive and focusing on my goals, even after the third surgery. I kept telling myself that I could still make it back for the Olympic Trials, which I know was kind of crazy, but I needed something to keep me going or I was going to get very depressed.
And of course, I had Carl. He’d been through two Achilles surgeries and before that two ACL surgeries, and he understood the physical and emotional toll that takes on an athlete.
Carl was dealing with some difficulties in his sport at the same time, wasn’t he?
He was. After tearing his Achilles and missing his first year with the New York Jets, he came back strong and got seven sacks in 2022. But in 2023, he had a lot of frustrations with the team. They lost Aaron Rogers right away, then for some reason they stopped playing Carl very much, which was really disappointing, so we had to be there for each other. Sometimes, it was like, “Who’s got the sunshine today?” But we got through it, and all that trauma made our relationship even stronger.
And things have finally settled down for both of you, yes?
They have. Carl signed with the Cowboys last year and had some really good games. It was a nice comeback year where he showed he’s still in the mix . In that business, they like to push out the veterans sometimes, but he was like “I’m here to stay!” And after all he’s been through, it’s amazing the way he’s moving now. The guy is a freak. I mean that as a compliment.
Of course. And you’re back on track as well?
I’m pretty much ready to go with my training. I need to give myself more grace, as hard as that is to do as an athlete, but I’m throwing well and seeing good things. I know I’m probably not going to PR in Oklahoma, but I’m excited to get started again.
Ideally, I wouldn’t want to open up this early, but my goal is to make the World Championships this summer, and this meet has points. And since I haven’t competed in two years, I need to get some meets under me to get my feel back for competing, for dealing with nerves and things like that.
What is your training setup like these days?
Doug will always be my primary coach. With him in Kansas and me in Florida, we spend a lot of time on the phone, and I send him videos. After the meet in Oklahoma, I’ll go to Kansas to train with him for a while and compete there.
I also have a few people who watch me train a little bit here in Florida. On Wednesdays, I go to the University of Miami and train with Coach Cory Young and some of the throwers there. Some days, I throw at a high school near here. Wolfgang Schmidt watches me sometimes.
Wolfgang Schmidt?
Yep. I really enjoy working with him. Doug and I are two peas in a pod in that we both love biomechanics and breaking stuff down, but that sometimes leads to me overthinking. Wolfgang is very relaxed. Are you balanced? Is the disc coming out of your hand nicely? His idea is to get the basics down–foot in the middle, good release, discus behind you–and your body will figure it out from there. At first, his approach was so simple I was wondering if I’d get anything out of it, but now I can see how it builds confidence and rhythm. I really enjoy his coaching style.
Note: The World Invitational will take place at Throw Town from April 10-13. Check out Throws University for a livestream featuring Joe Frontier and Moi as commentators!
Here’s part two of our 2025 NCAA Indoor Championships throws preview. Thanks to Pat Trofimuk for his obsession with statistics and his sage advice.
Women’s Shot Put
Saturday, March 15, 1:45pm EST
Colorado State’s Mya Lesnar took the title in Boston last year with a toss of 18.53m. It will take more than that to win in Virginia Beach, with two ladies in particular likely to push the winning mark over 19 meters.
The first is Nebraska’s Axelina Johansson, who appears to be finding her form at the right time. After a sensational 2023 season during which she surpassed 19 meters on four occasions including a best of 19.54m, the affable Swede topped out at 18.97m in 2024. But, two weeks ago at the Big 10 Championships, she flashed her 2023 stuff while hitting 19.31m for the win. As a former NCAA outdoor champ and Olympic and World Championships finalist, Axelina is at a point in her career where she should thrive under the pressure of a big comp. That will make her hard to beat on Saturday.
If anyone can do it, it’s likely to be Houston’s KeAyla Dove, whose 2025 season has been the kind of roller coaster ride that might make you cough up your funnel cake. She opened with a toss of 16.15m, hit 19.46m on Valentine’s Day, and has gone 18.20m and 18.28m in her two meets since.
But at this point in her career, KeAyla has plenty of experience navigating the ups and downs of her sport. Recruited out of high school to Sam Houston State by Coach Jon Tipton, KeAyla has since competed for three different schools in five different conferences.
She followed Coach Tipton when he took a job at North Texas State after the 2022 season and pushed her PB to 18.95m her first spring in Denton. Unfortunately, Coach Tipton quickly found that North Texas was not a good fit for him, and once again moved on.
KeAyla stayed, but did not thrive in Tipton’s absence, and after a rocky indoor season, the Mean Green staff encouraged her to enter the transfer portal. She did not have to be asked twice, and left North Texas without a firm destination in mind.
Luckily, Tipton was hired last summer by the University of Houston, and KeAyla was able to join him there.
The slow start to this indoor season was part of a careful plan to revive KeAyla’s career. “The first couple meets,” says Tipton, “were all about modeling our process. Our pre-meet routine, how we would go through warmups, how we’d handle prelims. That kind of thing. So, we didn’t care about distance. And the big thing was, we wanted KeAyla to enjoy throwing again. She’d lost that for a while.”
Tipton knew KeAyla had a big throw in her after seeing her push the 6k ball to 50 feet in training. Everything clicked at the Howie Ryan Invitational, and the result was a 51-centimeter PB.
The dropoff to 18.20m and 18.28m in the ensuing weeks can be attributed to a lack of stability in KeAyla’s technique, which is still in the developmental phase. In competition, she sometimes switches between a traditional and static start, and a reverse and non-reverse finish.
But, according to Tipton, “KeAyla is a Ferrari. Everyday, it’s about balancing the needle. A biomechanist here in Houston told her not long ago that she is physically capable of throwing 20 meters.”
If she can get anywhere close to that in Virginia Beach, she may walk away with her first NCAA title, which would be a nice step towards what she and Coach Tipton hope will be a long and successful pro career once her eligibility runs out this spring.
Another intriguing candidate for the top of the podium is defending outdoor champ Jaida Ross of Oregon. In 2024, Jaida was under 19 meters in every indoor comp, including NCAA’s where she finished second to Lesnar with a best of 18.47m. Then in April, she threw 19.71m at two different meets. In May, she broke 20 meters, then hit 19.60m at the Trials to make the team for Paris where she missed a medal by 4 centimeters.
With a World Championships coming this September, Jaida and her coach, Brian Blutreich, seem to be following the same plan that worked so well in 2024. Thus far in 2025, Jaida has a best of 18.47m. Is she capable of reaching the mid-19’s and grabbing the title in Virginia Beach? Absolutely. But with her eyes firmly focused on repeating outdoors, making the team for Tokyo, and fighting for her first international medal, don’t expect her to be in peak form this early in what promises to be a very long season.
And I do not mean to count out the defending champ. Mya Lesnar hit a season’s best 19.02m at the Mountain West Championships, and can certainly go farther on Saturday. Axelina, KeAyla, and Jaida all have PB’s significantly better than Mya’s 19.10m from 2024, but that did not stop Mya from winning in Boston. If it takes something closer to 19.00m than 19.50m to win, she could be in the mix.
My thrower to keep an eye on for the future is Koko Odeluga of Ol’ Miss, last year’s World U20 champ. Her best so far this season is 18.37m, but her coach is the Yoda of peaking, and she tossed a PB at last year’s Olympic Trials, so she won’t be wilting under the spotlight in Virginia Beach. She also has a super aggressive technique that is very fun to watch.
Men’s Shot Put
Saturday, March 15, 5:00pm EST
Trof and I like drama as much as the next guy. He even gets up at an ungodly hour many Sundays to get his Formula 1 fix, a habit that I find strange considering that you can stream Talladega Nights any time you want.
But we both agree that it is well within Tarik Robinson-O’Hagan’s power to end this thing on his first attempt Saturday. He’s the defending indoor and outdoor NCAA champ. He’s thrown over 21 meters twice in 2025. He’s been killing it in the weight room and in training with the off-weight shots. His coach is a dead ringer for Andy Reid. What else does a guy need?
Cincinnati’s Fred Moudani-Likbi is the only other putter over 20.50m so far this season. He’s also the only member of the field who can cuss in French, which can be an overlooked advantage. He lost his 2024 season to a lifting injury, but according to Coach Susan Seaton (who guided Annette Echikunwoke to hammer silver in Paris) kept “an amazingly positive mindset” while rehabbing.
Fred was able to come back and hit some lifting maxes this January, and according to Seaton his main focus lately is reviving his feel for the implement. In February, he found a nice groove at the Music City Invite where he put 20.62m to finish second in a duel with Tarik.
He dropped off to 19.12m at the Big 12 Championships, where Seaton says he probably put too much pressure on himself. The 20.62m would have been a French indoor record, but his federation wouldn’t certify it because of various technical details, so he was gunning for a big one at Big 12’s and got a little tight.
“Once you get into the mindset of focusing on the result,” she explained, “it is hard to get back to focusing on what is happening inside the circle. But one good thing with successful athletes is they are good communicators. They find ways to remain coachable. Fred is one of those people, and we’ve had some good conversations about this experience. He felt bad to let the team down at the Big 12’s, but I told him maybe it will turn out to be a good thing if it helps us have a better mental strategy at NCAA’s and you can focus on what you can control and not distances, marks, and placing, which you can’t really control. Hopefully, he can just focus on what happens in the ring and making a nice throw.”
Seaton also shared her experience with Annette at the 2024 Olympic Trials, which she says was more stressful than the Olympics. They were staying at an Airbnb in Eugene, and the morning of the final Annette was astonished to find her coach calmly watching the European Soccer Championships on her phone. “She was like, ‘Coach, I’m really nervous!’, and I said, ‘I know,’ but I just kept watching soccer and she finally said, ‘Coach, how can you keep watching soccer!?’”
Seaton reminded her that it would be another six hours before they headed to the track, and there was no point in driving themselves crazy with worry in the meantime.
“I said, ‘What are we doing today?’ She said, ‘Throwing hammer.’ I said, ‘What do we do every day? Throw hammer, right? So how hard can it be? You know the people in your life who love you and are proud of you. They will love you no matter what. And who cares what anyone else thinks? So, let’s not worry and just watch some soccer.’”
Assuming Fred takes his coach’s advice, he’ll be the guy pushing Tarik.
Next on the season’s best list is Thomas Kitchell from North Carolina, who hit an SB of 20.47m in February. Thomas transferred from Wake Forest last fall, and his coach Amin Nikfar was happy to get him.
“He’s been great,” Nikfar says. “I’ll only have him for one year, and with a one-year guy it’s important to be careful about making technical changes, so we haven’t tried many new things. You get handed a sports car, you don’t take it apart right away, just maybe try to supercharge it a little bit.”
Thomas was coached in high school by Glenn Thompson, who also mentored Ryan Whiting and Joe Kovacs back in the day. He then worked with Collin Post at Wake Forest. “Those guys,” according to Coach Nikfar, “did a phenomenal job with him, so this is just a continuation of what they started.”
Wisconsin’s Jason Swarens has been hanging around the top echelon of the sport for a while now, finishing fourth at the 2024 NCAA indoors, and second outdoors. His 20.24m toss at the Big 10’s broke the school record of 20.00m set by Danny Block in 2013. Always a class act (Danny grew up in the area where I coach) Danny immediately texted his congratulations. “I hope,” he wrote, “that you hold the record as long as I did.” If Swarens can find his form on Saturday, more congratulations might be in order.
When my daughter was little, I used to take her to the zoo all the time, and on many of those occasions we’d see Amish families walking around in their simple, homemade clothes looking like they’d just stepped out of a time machine. I have to admit, it was a little disorienting.
Shot put fans may experience the same weird feeling when South Carolina’s CJ Licata enters the ring in Virginia Beach and sets up to throw from a glide. But, go easy on him, people. He’s endured a lot just to make it this far.
CJ came down with appendicitis last year just a few days before the outdoor NCAA Championships and, after being hospitalized and losing ten pounds, could manage a best of only 18.79m in spite of having gone over 20 meters at three meets earlier in the season. He competed a few weeks later at the Trials, then finally had surgery to remove the appendix. A back injury messed up his recovery process this fall, and a groin strain this winter complicated matters further. CJ finally opened the 2025 season two weeks ago when he went 20.06m at the SECs. His coach, Mike Sergent, says he’s fit as a fiddle now, and very, very fired up. Trof pointed out that CJ might actually have benefited from throwing off a rough ring, as rotational putters prefer it a bit slick, but of course this is the one time in history when an organizing body actually listened to advice from coaches. Some guys just can’t catch a break.
Licata’s teammate and roommate Dylan Targgart finished third in Boston last year, but has struggled with back issues since the summer. Sergent believes he and CJ can both go over 20 meters on Saturday, which would be a great way for two “tough, positive” guys to finish their collegiate indoor careers.
I’m not sure how tough Trof and I are, but we are absolutely positive that the throwing events in Virginia Beach will be smokin’! I hope you can all tune in and cheer on these great athletes.
To most Americans, the term “March Madness” means one thing–an excuse to watch basketball on their phones instead of working. To my friend Pat Trofimuk and me, it means something entirely different –a chance to watch throwing events on our phones instead of working.
That’s right, folks. The 2025 Indoor Track and Field Championships will take place this weekend in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Pat and I will be following it closely, and we recommend that you do, too. Here’s why.
The Facility
Apparently, it’s quite a lovely place. It also looked, for a while, like it was going to be a factor in the competition.
According to the worldwide web, the Virginia Beach Sports Center was designed to feature 117,000 square feet of column-free, flexible space, a 200-meter banked track, seating for 5,000 spectators, concession areas, skybox meeting rooms, and ample parking.
What it lacked was a top-notch throwing ring.
Shocking, I know.
Word has it that the concrete ring as originally installed at the VBSC was rough and super slow. One of the bolts holding down the toeboard also snapped in the middle of a competition earlier this year, forcing the men’s and women’s shot to be contested from a portable wooden ring.
You’ll never get a throws coach to openly disparage the condition of a facility, especially at a meet like the NCAA Championships where the focus is more on placing and less on producing a PB. Everyone, after all, throws from the same ring.
But I’m not an NCAA coach, so I’ll go ahead and state the obvious. Virginia Beach would not be hosting these championships had they installed a crappy track.
Such is the never-ending story of our sport. If you watched the shot comps at last summer’s Olympics, you probably noticed that once rain began to fall, so did the putters. With the men, Ryan Crouser and Rajindra Campbell both got off nice throws before the ring got wet, and Joe Kovacs and Payton Otterdahl each threw their best in the final round, but aside from that, rounds four, five and six featured seventeen fouls in twenty-four attempts as the competition–which should have featured three guys hammering away at the 23-meter line–devolved into a contest of who could make it through a throw without breaking their neck.
Could the organizers in Paris have installed a ring smooth enough to encourage big throws but grippy enough to give folks a chance in the rain? Absolutely. And it would have cost next to nothing compared to the three million Euro they laid out to install a state-of-the-art Mondo track. But they did not care about the quality of the throwing ring as long as runners were able to post fast times and give everybody a good show on the oval. It was the same story in Tokyo in 2021. The meet organizers there paid millions for a Mondo track surface, which they also used for the javelin runway. Unfortunately, in hot weather the Mondo surface does not hold up under the pressure that javelin throwers exert as they slam their block leg down at the end of each throw. That had a big effect on the competition, and probably kept the men’s favorite–Johannes Vetter–from contending for a medal.
It looked like it was going to be a similar story in Virginia Beach. The runners would compete on a high-quality banked track, while the throwers would make due with a lousy ring when it was easily within the power of the meet organizers and the NCAA to fix it.
And then, a miracle.
Jerry Clayton–longtime coach at Auburn, Michigan, and LSU–is now an NCAA official. Over the past few weeks, various throws coaches reached out to him asking for help in getting the Virginia Beach ring modified, and…he made it happen.
All it took was water, some kind of stone or brick, and someone who knew what the hell they were doing.
Regardless of the method used, it appears that the Virginia Beach ring will be in optimal shape this weekend. Bombs may ensue.
Women’s Weight
Friday, March 14th 2:15pm EST
Trof and I agree that Anthonett Nabwe is the favorite here. She produced an NCAA-leading 24.22m at the Big 10 championships two weeks ago after posting marks of 23.56m and 23.21m earlier this season.
Anthonett was attracted to the University of Minnesota at first because of the thriving Liberian community in the Twin Cities. Her family immigrated to Jamestown, North Dakota, around the time she entered eighth grade, and as fate would have it the local high school had a serious throws coach whose daughter had competed at Iowa. That coach tipped off the Gophers’ Peter Miller that Anthonett might be special, and he was not kidding.
According to Miller, she is “the most powerful human being I’ve been around, male or female.” Anthonett tossed the weight 17.80m while red-shirting during her first year on campus, then demonstrated that power by improving to 23.36m while winning the 2024 Big 10 meet.
She also broke the school record in the shot put last year, while enduring the kinds of ups and downs common among young throwers. Those experiences, according to Miller, have helped her learn how to “manage her nervous system” in the big meets.
That’s good news, because she’ll face some stout competition in Virginia Beach.
Cal’s Giovanna Meeks arrived on campus this winter as a mid-year transfer from Vanderbilt with a PB of 23.04m. Coach Mo Saatara immediately put her through a “crash course” in his approach to weight throwing, and Giovanna responded by breaking 23.50m at three different comps so far this season. It will likely take more than that to win on Friday, but Mo describes her as a “hell of a competitor” so don’t be surprised if she challenges for the title.
Another contender will be Shelby Frank of Texas Tech, who finished second last year while representing Minnesota. She arrived in Lubbock with a PB of 24.09m and tons of big meet experience, which should serve her well this weekend as she tries to help the Red Raiders to a top-three spot in the race for the team title. Some might call that added pressure, but for a veteran like Shelby it might give her the juice she needs to steal the win.
A couple of years ago, Wisconsin’s Chloe Lindeman had the following conversation with coach Dave Astrauskas.
Dave: Chloe, I think you should stop throwing the shot put. Weight and hammer are the way to go for you.
Chloe: Coach, what are you talking about? I’m a shot putter.
Dave: We all think we are a certain thing until we are not.
Since that fateful day, Chloe has won a Big 10 weight title and upped her PB to 23.77m. That throw came in 2023, when Chloe was using one wind and three turns. Earlier this season, she switched to a slap start and four turns, which Astrauskas hopes will allow her to carry a little more ball speed into the finish. Chloe is a strong competitor, a notorious “gripper and ripper” who has often relied on her violent finish to make the ball go. If her new technique allows her to find the right balance between aggression and smoothness, she too will be in the mix.
If, as seems likely, it takes 23.50m or more to win, the competition should come down to one of these four ladies.
Let me close by mentioning an up-and-comer currently representing the University of Illinois. Phethisang Makhethe is a native of South Africa who transferred from New Mexico State after winning Western Athletic Conference titles in the hammer and weight. Under the tutelage of JC Lambert and DeAnna Price, she has broken 23 meters on two occasions this season, and should be a contender for the 2026 title.
Men’s Weight
Friday, March 14th 6:05pm EST
During a meet at the Air Force Academy back in 2023, Wyoming coach Paul Barrett was watching the weight throw when a large young man representing Chadron State College stepped into the ring. Barrett remembers looking over at his head coach and saying, “That’s exactly what I’m looking for. A big ol’ hoss with power!”
A few weeks later, that hoss–his name is Daniel Reynolds–entered the portal, and in 2024 arrived in Laramie with a thrower’s body, a sprinter’s speed, a 4.0 GPA and, according to Barrett, the power of an elite Olympic lifter. He also carried some bad technical habits that had prevented him from exploring his potential.
John Smith told me recently that it is extremely difficult to change bad habits in the hammer and weight once they’ve become ingrained in a kid. Last year, Daniel and Coach Barrett did their best and got him up to 21.46m, but both knew there was lots left in the tank.
The secret to tapping his huge capacity? Addition by subtraction.
According to Barrett, using three turns in the weight caused Daniel to “scoop his finish” and lose his balance as he released the implement. Last fall, they took some throws with a heavy weight using two turns and…Viola!
“He killed it in the fall using two turns,” says Barrett. “And he killed it again when we got inside and used two turns with the thirty-pound weight.”
This winter, Daniel has PR’d every meet, posting a best of 25.06m at the Mountain West Championships. That’s the second best throw in NCAA history, and Coach Barrett says Reynolds can go farther. “We’ve been throwing a lot of heavy weights all season,” he explained. “So he really hasn’t felt the competition ball very well yet. But lately we’ve been using the thirty-five in practice, so he should have a nice feel at NCAA’s.”
That 25.06m makes Daniel the prohibitive favorite this weekend with one possible caveat. For the first time in his career, he’ll carry the weight of great expectations into the ring and, as with Anthonett Nabwe, it will all come down to how well he can manage his nerves and control that Porsche engine of his. And according to Trof, to whom I always defer in matters of the weight, Reynolds’ two-turn technique is tailor-made to hold up in high-pressure situations.
If Reynolds falters, look for Trey Knight of CSUN to fill the void. Knight was second last year with a toss of 24.14m and this season upped his PB to 24.87m. The high school record-holder in the hammer, Trey has been in plenty of big competitions and, according to his coach Dan Lange, possesses a healthy outlook about the sport.
The two originally joined forces at USC where Lange says they learned a lot about maintaining perspective.
“We have,” Lange explained in a conversation last spring, “a process of doing the sport in a way that is healthy and positive. At a Power Five program, it’s easy to fall into a pattern where scoring and winning becomes a transactional obligation. At CSUN, Trey was able to rediscover the joy in throwing, and we really don’t talk about scoring in nationals. We just work at trying to be exceptional at what we are doing.”
If Knight does, in fact, keep his chill, look for him to put some heat on Reynolds.
Ryan Johnson, a midyear transfer from Eastern Michigan to Iowa, might also throw some kerosene on the fire. He did not compete at the 2024 Indoor meet, but took fourth in the hammer last summer at the World U20 Championships, and is unlikely to wilt in the spotlight.
Tarik Robinson-O’Hagan is also no shrinking violet. The former World U20 shot put champ, Tarik is defending NCAA champ indoors and out in the shot. He finished fifth in the NCAA weight last year with a toss of 22.97m, and hit 24.35m at the recent SEC Championships. His coach, John Smith, told me that Tarik’s practice numbers are better than a year ago, and he will be ready to rumble on Friday before defending his shot title on Saturday. If it sounds like a lot to ask a kid to bring his A game to both events, remember that Tarik posted an outdoor shot PB of 20.98m along with a hammer PB of 74.54m at last summer’s Olympic Trials.
And don’t count out Harvard’s Kenneth Ikeji, who won this event last year with a toss of 24.32m. His best so far in 2025 is 23.62m, but he certainly knows how to dial it up under pressure.
Finally, Virginia’s Jeremiah Nubbe has posted three comps over 23.50m after transferring from Texas in the fall. Nubbe is currently coached by Brandon Amo, who helped Ikeji to an NCAA hammer title in 2023. Can Coach Amo create another magic moment with Nubbe? We shall see!
In 2015, Joe Kovacs established himself as the planet’s best shot putter (male version) by launching a massive 22.56m PB at the Monaco Diamond League meeting. That throw moved him to eighth on the all time list, with the seven gents ahead of him having achieved their marks between 1975 and 1990 when…well, you know.
Later that summer, Joe won his first international medal–a gold at the Worlds in Beijing–and at the age of 26 seemed primed to establish himself as the greatest shot putter of the drug-testing era, and maybe the greatest of any era.
Joe Kovacs. Photo courtesy of Diamond League AG.
In the years since, Joe has more than fulfilled the promise he showed during that breakout season, producing historically huge throws in some of the biggest comps, including 22.91m at the Doha Worlds and 22.65m at the Tokyo Olympics. He also became the second man during the current not-so-easy-to-cheat era to surpass 23 meters.
But if you are reading this article, you know who the first guy was, and therein lies the story heading into Paris.
As great as Joe has been, Ryan Crouser has usually been better.
Since 2016, Crouser has won two Olympics, two Outdoor Worlds, one Indoor Worlds and seven national titles, often at Joe’s expense. When Joe went 22.65m in Tokyo, Crouser hit 23.30m. When Joe reached 22.87m at the 2022 US Championships and 22.89m three weeks later at the World Championships, Crouser topped him at both with throws of 23.12m and 22.94m.
At the Triton Invitational in 2015, Joe launched a warmup throw reportedly in the 23.75m range, which got folks thinking that Randy Barnes’ 23.12m World Record, set in 1990, was finally going to come off the books. Folks were right, but it was Crouser not Kovacs who leapfrogged Barnes by reaching 23.37m at the 2021 Trials. And when Joe made his own World Record bid with a 23.23m bomb at the 2022 Diamond League Final, Crouser responded the following spring by taking the mark out to 23.56m.
Long story short, after a decade of eating Crouser’s dust (a big exception being the historic Doha comp) the Paris Olympics offer Joe Kovacs one final opportunity to put himself back into consideration as the greatest putter of all time. All he has to do is break the World Record and win the gold medal.
Which is not such a crazy notion. People who ought to know have said that Joe was in World Record shape when he threw 22.43m at the Trials but got a little too excited and lost his rhythm. The stakes will be much higher in Paris, so keeping his chill could be très difficile. Might I suggest a pre-comp plate of crêpes? After all, they’re just thin pancakes.
But even if Joe does bang out a new record, what are the odds it lasts more than a round or two? Yes, Crouser missed a ton of training this spring while recuperating from elbow and pec injuries, but you may recall that in 2023, after three weeks of inactivity due to blood clots in his leg, he hobbled into Budapest and went 23.51m.
There is also the question of this Leonardo Fabbri fellow, the twenty-seven-year-old Italian who took silver in Budapest with his first-ever 22-meter throw. So far in 2024, he has surpassed 22 meters in twelve different comps. On six occasions, he has gone 22.50m or better.
Leonardo Fabbri. Photo courtesy of Diamond League AG.
That kind of consistency suggests that Kovacs and Crouser aren’t the only ones capable of breaking the World Record.
Beyond that Fearsome Threesome, only a few guys strike me as having the pop to get near the podium. Payton Otterdahl has gone 22m+ in seven of nine comps this year and likely will again in Paris.
Payton Otterdahl. Photo courtesy of USATF.
In 2022 and 2023, Chuk Enekwechi was plagued by sciatic nerve issues which, based on the 21.91m PB he launched in May, appear to be resolved. He’s been a warrior on the tour for years, a great guy and tough competitor, with a physique that would make a Greek statue jealous. It would be great to see him contend, though it will take a big PB to get in the mix.
Chuk Enekwechi. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.
Sometimes Mother Nature works in strange ways. For example, Filip Mihaljević and I were both born on July 31st, yet he grew up to be European champion and World Indoor bronze medalist while I struggle to dunk on an eight-foot basketball hoop. One similarity we share to this day is that neither of us has made an Olympic shot put final. That will change this weekend, and as with Chuk it would be great to see a guy who has been such a great ambassador for the sport get in the hunt for a medal.
Filip Mihaljević. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.
Finally, I’m told that Zane Weir, my favorite skinny person, has been training superbly after overcoming a sprained ankle. The next step is regaining the confidence to unleash the beast in competition. Luckily, Zane has a knack for performing well under pressure. With Kovacs, Crouser, and Fabbri in the field, there will be plenty of it.
Zane Weir. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.
Men’s Hammer Final
August 4
Last year, Ethan Katzberg became my second-favorite skinny person when he ambled into Budapest and put an end to Polish dominance in the men’s hammer. I have nothing against the Poles and their awe-inspiring skill and consistency, but how could you not root for a guy who, when the camera showed him between throws, looked like a teenager patiently waiting for his mom to pick him up from the skate park?
Ethan Katzberg . Photo courtesy of Dylan Armstrong.
Can he win again in Paris, or might the Worlds have been a one-off, fluky kind of thing?
Well, Ethan’s season’s best of 84.38m is 3 meters better than anyone else in 2024, so…yes, he’s going to win. He might even make a run at Sergey Litvinov’s 84.80m Olympic record. And before you accuse me of being an overly optimistic hoser, consider this:
Prior to Budapest, Ethan had hit 80 meters a total of zero times then went 81.25m for the win. This year, he’s been over 80 meters on seven occasions. Qualification should be stress free for him, and he can open the final with a middling distance and still put himself in the top eight. That kind of security gives a fella room to relax and swing for the fences.
The contenders for silver and bronze will include Wojciech Nowicki, the defending Olympic champ who is not so much skinny as mountainous. At 35, Wojciech’s career is nearing its end, and he’s only hit 80 meters once this year, but that came in round six at the European Championships and got him the win. He is seasoned and unflappable in the clutch, qualities which will serve him well in a comp where places two through five might be separated by half a meter.
Bence Halász, Wojciech Nowicki, and Mykhaylo Kokhan . Photo courtesy of Getty Images.
Twenty-six-year old Bence Halász took the bronze in Budapest, and was on the receiving end of Nowicki’s sixth-round haymaker this year in Rome, so he’s battle-tested. He also has developed the charming habit of throwing his best when it counts the most. All four of his lifetime comps over 80 meters have come in major championship finals.
Ukraine’s Mykhaylo Kokhan is another strong podium candidate. He placed fourth in Tokyo, as a twenty-year-old, and has been over 80 meters on four occasions this year, including 80.18m in Rome. How Ukrainian athletes like Mykhaylo have been able to keep it together while their country has been brutalized by the Russians is a mystery to me, but every Ukrainian medal at these Games will be an “up yours” to Putin, so I am hoping he goes big.
And let’s not forget about five-time World Champ Pawel Fajdek who looks like he should be commanding a motorcycle gang in rural Montana. He’d surely like to add a tenth major championships medal to a haul that places him among the all time greats. At thirty-five, he lacks some of his youthful pop and has only gone 80 meters twice in two years, but old man strength and the ability to make people wet themselves with a single glance cannot be discounted.
Pawel Fajdek. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.
Yann Chaussinand has hit 79+ on two occasions this year, and will be the only top competitor who can, if need be, cuss in French. At every Olympic Games, a few members of the host squad produce sensational performances. Might Yann come up with something to thrill the home crowd in Paris? Oui, vraiment!
Finally, the German champion Merlin Hummel hit an impressive 79.25m PB in lousy conditions at the European Championships, and at twenty-two might be young and inexperienced enough not to realize that he should be overwhelmed by his first Olympics.
Women’s Discus Final
August 5
Val Allman dominated in Tokyo and has only gotten better since. So far this season, she is undefeated in nine comps including four Diamond League meetings. She threw 69.80m and 69.86m on consecutive weekends in China, and 70.89m and 70.73m on separate days at the Trials. Any of those distances would likely win in Paris.
Val Allman. Photo courtesy of USATF.
I say “likely” rather than “definitely” because though none of Val’s competitors has come close to matching her consistent excellence this year, she…they…well…did you watch the last two World Championships?
In 2022, Bin Feng produced a 69.12m shock-a-roonie to snag the gold medal. That was a 3-meter PB, and I have since adopted her name as a verb, as in “I was up by two on my grandson in driveway basketball when he Bin Fenged me with a 3-pointer from behind the minivan.”
Bin Feng. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.
Then last year in Budapest, Lagi Tausaga “Bin Fenged” both Val and Bin Feng with a 4-meter PB
But I don’t see that happening in Paris. Lagi will not be present after fouling three times in qualification at the Trials.
In eight comps this year, Bin Feng has averaged a healthy 66.29m, but it’s going to take 70m+ to top Val and she’s not going to get there.
Sandra Elkasević, the best there ever was, will bring the heat to her final Olympics, but she’s not hitting 70 meters either.
Sandra Elkasević. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.
Nor will Jorinde Van Klinken, who will be throwing the shot in Paris as well. She was sensational at the European Championships in spite of a Day 1 schedule that had her competing in the shot qualification, disc qualification and shot final in the span of twelve hours.
Jorinde somehow survived, and took silver in the shot that evening, then silver again in the disc on Day 2 with a toss of 65.99m on legs that must have felt like overcooked pasta. A month later she reached 67.23m at the Paris Diamond League meeting, which may well foreshadow a big performance at the Games. Silver or bronze would be a huge step forward in her career, and could signal the start of an intriguing rivalry with Val.
Another up-and-comer worth noting is freshly-minted Swedish record holder Vanessa Kamga. Vanessa won’t get on the podium, but she’s a good bet for the top eight and it is really fun to root for her because she seems to take great joy from throwing the discus–which is why we’re here, non?
Women’s Hammer Final
August 6
Father Time will have a say in this one.
Camryn Rogers, twenty-five years old and the defending World Champion, has surpassed 75 meters in five of six comps this year with a season’s best of 77.76m, which she threw on two occasions. Rogers is sure to throw 77m+ in Paris, and there’s only one competitor who–in 2024 at least–has shown the kind of firepower necessary to match her.
Camryn Rogers. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.
That would be 2019 World Champion DeAnna Price, who has gone 75 meters or better five times this season including two comps over 77. I’m told that DeAnna dropped one in the 78-meter range during warmups at the Trials, which suggests she’s close to top form after several injury-plagued years.
But the effort she put into that warm up throw caused her back to spazz, and her best toss in the final was 74.52m. At thirty-one, DeAnna is by no means old, but the type of training required of a world class hammer thrower takes a toll.
DeAnna Price. Photo courtesy of USATF.
If she can stay healthy through qualification and all six throws in the final, she can go toe-to-toe with Rogers and also, per an agreement with her husband/coach JC Lambert become dog eligible. The couple currently owns two, but JC has promised another if DeAnna can medal. And people think these athletes are in it for the money.
If all goes well and DeAnna and Camryn slug it out for gold and silver, the third spot on the podium will be available to anyone who can muster a 75- meter throw. Aside from Rogers and Price there will be five or six ladies capable of reaching that mark, most notably Sara Fantini, who took gold in front of the home crowd in Rome.
Anita Włodarczyk, the three-time Olympic champ, has been hovering in the 71-72 meter range all season, robbed of her pop by years of hard training and injuries, including an ankle sprain suffered while celebrating a World Record throw in 2009, and a leg injury sustained while stomping a man she caught trying to steal her car in 2022. I don’t think she’ll reach the podium in Paris, but if she somehow produces a big one, steer clear if she heads your way for a celebratory hug.
Anita Włodarczyk. Photo courtesy of World Athletics.
My pick for bronze is Annette Echikunwoke who came out on top in a grueling comp at the Trials which saw 2022 World Champ Brooke Andersen and Budapest silver medalist Janee’ Kassanavoid fail to make the team. That kind of toughness will serve her well in Paris.
Annette Echikunwoke. Photo courtesy of USATF.
Daniel Ståhl Books Available
With the Olympics upon us, two books by Vésteinn Hafsteinsson and moi, provide great insight into what it took to get the 2021 discus gold medalist Daniel Ståhl to the top of the podium in Tokyo.
The first, Training forGold: The Plan that made Daniel Ståhl an Olympic Champion details the training program that Vésteinn devised for Daniel. During a thirty-year career as one of the greatest throws coaches ever, Vésteinn came up with an approach to training that those interested in lifting and throwing will find fascinating.
The second book, Gold: The Olympic Journey of Daniel Ståhl and Vésteinn Hafsteinsson, tells the inside story of how Daniel went from hockey player to Olympic discus champion in a ten-year span. This one will appeal to throws lovers and also to more general readers.
Both are available on Amazon and other outlets.
Check out the Throw Big Throw Far Podcasts!
I recently joined up with podcast meister Joe Frontier and all time great shot putter Darrell Hill for a series of Olympic preview podcasts. Darrell will be in the booth when field event qualification rounds are shown on NBC Peacock, and you’ll see why NBC hired him as you listen to these episodes. You can find them through Apple Podcasts and other outlets.
Jalani Davis won the NCAA weight toss and finished 3rd in the shot. Photo courtesy of Ole Miss.
36 the hard way
The Ole’ Miss throws squad, led by the venerable John Smith and his protege Dempsey McGuigan, finished the indoor season with a flourish, sweeping the weight and shot at the SEC Championships, then adding two more individual NCAA titles to Smith’s voluminous resume.
The fun began in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on February 23rd when Jalani Davis launched the weight a PB 25.09m to break the meeting record she set in 2023. Teammate Jasmine Mitchell came in second with a toss of 23.73m.
In the men’s weight, sophomore Tarik Robinson-O’Hagan took the title by dropping three of his six attempts past the 23-meter line, including a best of 23.55m. Four of Tarik’s throws would have been good enough to put him ahead of second-placer Ruben Banks of Alabama, who finished with a top toss of 22.54m.
With Davis and Robinson-O’Hagan delivering early knockouts, the weight comps lacked drama. It was a different story in the shot.
At the 2023 SECs Florida’s Alida Van Daalen snatched the title from Davis with a sixth-round PB of 18.66m. Davis also PB’d in that comp, with a toss of 18.43m, which foreshadowed her stunning performance at the USATF Outdoor Champions where she would hit 18.62m to win a spot on the US team for Budapest.
This year, Van Daalen had the lead going into round five with a best of 18.25m. Davis, meanwhile, sat in eighth place with a scorecard that read: 15.56m, 16.08m, Foul, Foul.
That kind of series at a championship meet can make a coach regret his choice of career, but Smith never lost faith that Davis would hit the big one.
“Jalani,” he explained, “generates a lot of power. But sometimes she has trouble getting left at the back and sometimes she forgets to get up out of the middle, so she plows everything forward and can’t keep it in. But if she gets out of the back early and gets up at the finish, it’s gone. I’ve seen her struggle then put it together and go ten feet farther.”
That’s essentially what happened on her fifth throw in Fayetteville, when Davis launched a new indoor PB of 18.61m to take the lead.
To her credit, Van Daalen produced her best throw of the day in round six, but still finished two centimeters shy of Davis.
John Smith, Tarik Robinson-O’Hagan, Ole Miss head coach Connie Price-Smith, Jalani Davis, and Dempsey McGuigan. Photo courtesy of Ole Miss.
Going into the SECs, Smith thought Robinson-O’Hagan was in shape to throw 20 meters. It turned out he needed to do just that to hold off a strong field which included Roje Stona of Arkansas, John Meyer of LSU, and Dylan Targgart of South Carolina.
Stona (19.80m) and Meyer (19.78m) held the top two spots after three rounds, with Robinson-O’Hagan (19.59m) and Targgart (19.33m) at their heels.
The bombs dropped in round five. First, Florida’s Kai Chang busted a 19.36m PB which, back in the day, might have put him in contention. Just for fun, I looked up the 2014 SEC Indoor results, and the winner that year, Kentucky’s Brad Szypka, finished with a best of 19.47m. Alas, those days are long gone, and Chang’s chuck would lift him no higher than fifth.
Robinson-O’Hagan stepped in two throws later and smashed 20.38m, an all time PB and his second career toss over the 20-meter line.
“He got himself turned in the middle better on that one,” explained Smith. “And he really attacked through his right side at the front.”
Meyer answered with 19.84m to briefly jump Stona, but the big Jamaican–a remarkable athlete who holds a discus PB of 68.64m– replied with a 19.94m SB. (Note: A few days after SECs, Stona wowed the football world by ripping off a 4.69 40-yard dash at Arkansas’ pro day.)
Targgart found his form a round later and launched a PB of 19.99m to vault into second. But, in the end, Robinson-O’Hagan’s 20.38m held up for the win, giving Ole Miss the second throws sweep in SEC Indoor history.
The NCAA Championships were held in Boston two weeks later, at a facility called “The Track at New Balance,” whatever that means. Unfortunately for the throwers competing there, the ring at the Track at New Balance–try saying it slowly, in your best announcer’s voice–was notoriously slick.
Smith credits Dempsey–who is Irish and therefore extremely reliable–with gathering intel on the facility weeks in advance. Based on Dempsey’s findings, they decided to order Velaasa shoes for their crew as Velaasas tend to be grippier than the standard Nikes. That would turn out to be a wise decision if not quite a cure-all.
Shortly before the SECs, Robinson-O’Hagan had begun throwing the weight with a full windup and four turns, but they considered switching him back to three turns at NCAAs due to the treacherous ring.
Tarik Robinson-O’Hagan took fifth in the NCAA weight. Photo courtesy of Ole Miss.
Tarik, though, adheres to the “Go big, or go home!” philosophy of throwing, and with Banks, Northern Arizona’s Garret Bernt, and Harvard’s Kenneth Ikeji heading a strong field in Boston, it would clearly take 24 meters to nab the win.
Tarik felt like he was in 24-meter shape, but he’d need to employ four turns to reach that distance. “He’s so competitive,” Dempsey explained. “To Tarik, there’s no difference between second and eighth place. He was gunning for the win, so we stayed with four turns.”
Unfortunately, Tarik fouled his first attempt, and could not quite find his rhythm the rest of the comp. Dempsey says the ring was not to blame, an assertion that would be supported by Tarik’s performance in the shot the next day.
“It was,” according to Dempsey, “just one of those days. Really, it was the only bad meet he’s had in the weight. It just happened to occur at NCAAs.”
Meanwhile, both Ikeji (24.32m) and CSUN’s Trey Knight (24.14m) went big. So did Bernt (23.09m) and Banks (23.05m) to round out the top four.
Tarik ended up fifth with a best of 22.97m. The good news though, according to Smith, was that Tarik’s performance in the weight got him angry going into the shot. More on that in a bit.
Next up was the women’s weight where Jalani Davis, like Tarik, was determined to go for the win. The difference was that Davis would not need a PB to contend. She’d won in 2023 with a toss of 24.51m, and her 25.09m from the 2024 SECs denoted her as the clear favorite.
Teammate Mitchell and 2023 NCAA second-placer Shelby Frank of Minnesota had both reached 24 meters this season, but neither were likely to threaten Davis–if she could control her considerable firepower on that slick surface. To make this more likely, Team Smith made the decision that in addition to wearing Velaasas, Jalani would begin the comp using two turns rather than her normal three.
After a tentative opener of 21.34m, Davis climbed to 23.14m then 24.80m. With Mitchell and Frank both struggling to find their footing, it appeared 24.80m would likely be enough for the win, so Jalani switched back to using three turns on her final three attempts.
The meet and collegiate record of 25.56m had been held by Smith pupil Brittany Riley since 2007, and according to Smith, Jalani was in shape to take it down, but “her speed and power didn’t work on that ring.” She sandwiched a 22.88m toss between two fouls, but in the end had to be satisfied with her second consecutive title. As in 2023, Frank (22.69m) finished second and Mitchell (22.15m) third. Remarkably, it was Mitchell’s fourth consecutive NCAA Championships medal in the event.
Jasmine Mitchell medaled in her fourth consecutive NCAA Indoor Championships. Photo courtesy of Ole Miss.
The next day, Robinson-O’Hagan lined up against a men’s shot field loaded with heavy hitters including the aforementioned SEC studs, Georgia’s Alex Kolesnikoff, Ohio State’s Hayden Tobias, Notre Dame’s Michael Shoaf, Wisconsin’s Jason Swarens and Andrew Stone, and Nebraska’s Kevin Shubert. All those guys have 20-meter pop, so Smith decided to have Tarik swing for the fences in round one.
“We knew Tarik was in good shape,” he explained. “In the last two weeks, he’d had training PRs with several different balls, and we figured if he could hit a big throw early he could shake up the competition.”
That he did, with a PB blast of 20.57m, which put him ahead of Swarens (19.87m) and Wake Forest’s Thomas Kitchell (19.73m).
The SEC crew got going in round two as Stona (19.96m) and Targgart (19.99m) jumped Swarens and Kitchell. Then Stona made matters veeeery interesting by blasting a 20.48m PB on his fourth attempt.
Meanwhile, Smith strongly encouraged Tarik not to rest on his laurels. After that sensational opener, he’d gone 19.58m, Foul, 20.20m, and 20.15m–an outstanding series, but one that left the door open for Stona and perhaps others. Targgart, for example, climbed to 19.95m in round five.
“After his opener,” Smith explained, “Tarik was sliding off to the left on his finish, so I told him to stop being a wuss and stand up at the front and nail it.”
Tarik Robinson-O’Hagan found firm footing in the NCAA shot. Photo courtesy of Ole Miss.
Round six turned out to be anticlimactic as Kitchell, Swarens, and Stona all fouled, and Targgart settled for 19.89m. So when Tarik stepped in for his final attempt, he had the competition sewn up. That did not, however, prevent Smith from giving him a quick “ass-chewing.”
According to Smith, Tarik is an old-school type putter who thrives on emotion and prefers to compete angry. “He actually loves to get chewed out during competitions. He gets pissed at me if I don’t do it.”
Whether it was the quality of the ass-chewing or residual disappointment from his performance in the weight, Robinson-O’Hagan found the fire he needed to close the comp with a new PB and facility record of 21.05m.
The final throwing event was the women’s shot, with Colorado State’s Mya Lesnar coming in as the favorite. She was the only collegiate woman to crack the 19-meter barrier during the indoor campaign, but figured to be pushed by Oregon’s Jaida Ross who hit a PB of 18.84m at the Razorback Invitational in January, and by Jalani, who according to Smith was in 19-meter-plus shape.
Unfortunately, the slick ring caused trouble from the get go. Mya opened with 15.36m, Alida Van Daalen with 15.14m. Jalani hit 18.15m in round one, which would have been fine had she been able to build from there, but her living-on-the-edge approach to shot putting was not a good match for the facility and she fouled her five remaining throws.
She even earned a rare “yellow card” after one failed attempt when she expressed her frustration with a certain four-letter word. This, according to Dempsey, was quite a surprise. “Tarik cusses all the time,” he marveled, “and gets nothing.”
Jalani Davis finished third in the NCAA shot. Photo courtesy of Ole Miss.
Sitting in eighth place after three rounds, Lesnar finally found her balance in the fourth and banged out an 18.53m winner. Ross responded with 18.47m to lock up second place, while Jalani’s 18.15m held up for third.
What with the competition and the unpredictable nature of a ring that seemed manageable at times and impossible at others, the points did not come easy in Boston. But in the end, the Ole Miss throws squad hauled in 36, a mark they’ll be looking to beat at the outdoor championships in June.
The memory keeper
It would be hard to contest the discus or javelin in most indoor venues without sending paying customers sprinting for the exits, so meets like the recent Indoor World Championships trend to skip the decathlon in favor of a heptathlon featuring the 60-meter dash, long jump, shot put, high jump, 60-meter hurdles, pole vault, and 1000-meter run. In Glasgow, Switzerland’s Simon Ehammer took gold in the event, finishing with 6418 points, 11 more than Norway’s Sander Skotheim.
The bronze medal went to an Estonian named Johannes Erm who, since last November, has been trained by a team of coaches and support personnel put together by Raul Rebane, a journalist and communications consultant. A quarter century ago, Raul assembled a similar team around Gerd Kanter.
Raul first became aware of Gerd in May of 2000 when he stopped by a local competition in Tallinn to watch the decathlete Erki Nool try to sharpen his discus technique.
“I had never heard the name ‘Gerd Kanter,’” Raul recalled later. “I had never seen him. He was very fast in the ring, but he had terrible technique. In this competition, he threw a personal record of around 53.50m, which was nothing special for a guy who was already twenty-one years old.”
But there was something about young Gerd that set him apart from most of the other competitors.
“His eyes,” Raul says, “were burning.”
Thirty years spent covering sports had taught Raul an important lesson about identifying talent. Great athletes, he observed, are not like you and me.
“They cannot be normal,” he explained. “They must be people for whom achievement is more important than life. Every training to them is a possibility to get better, to take a short step towards their dream. They are always hungry to do more. There is no question about going to training. They just go.”
Raul invented a name for this type of ferocious determination. He calls it “achievement brains,” and his formula for evaluating athletic potential is simple: “First brains, then muscles. When they are together, jackpot!”
Something Raul saw in Gerd’s eyes at that meet in Tallinn suggested to him that this tall kid with lousy technique might have what it takes to be a champion. A couple of weeks later, he spotted Gerd walking along the street and decided to check his “brains.”
“Your name is Gerd Kanter?”
“Yes.”
“You are a sportsman?”
“Yes.”
“Who are you?”
“I am a discus thrower.”
“Are you kidding? Fifty-three meters, what kind of discus thrower are you?”
“I am a discus thrower!”
“Okay, let’s go have some coffee.”
“I don’t drink coffee!”
“Then we’ll have water.”
It was the start of a beautiful relationship.
Long story short, Raul set about helping Gerd pursue his discus dreams. First, he convinced Vésteinn Hafsteinsson to take Gerd into his training group. Over time, he rounded up sponsors, and put together a support team that included a physiotherapist, massage therapist, and sports psychologist. One day, Raul noticed that a teenager named Hans Üürike had created a Gerd Kanter fan page online, and Hans was drafted into the cause as well. (After contributing his talents to Team Kanter, Hans went on to manage the careers of Daniel Ståhl, Sarah Mitton, Fanny Roos, Simon Pettersson, and Fedrick Dacres.)
Eight years after Raul and Gerd sat down for that first glass of water, Gerd stood atop the medal stand at the Beijing Olympics. It was the second most impactful day of Raul’s life.
“The most important event in my life,” he says, “was 20th August 1991, when Estonia got independence. The funny thing is that I was in Japan covering the World Championships and all the journalists there wanted to interview me about what was happening in Estonia. Russian tanks were 80 kilometers from Tallinn. Fortunately, they finally agreed to withdraw, so I went to Tokyo as a citizen of one state–the Soviet Union–and came back citizen of another state, a free Estonia.”
Estonians had suffered terribly under Soviet occupation. Russian troops first arrived in 1940 after Stalin and Hitler signed a pact dividing up eastern Europe. The arrests and deportations began immediately. Police officers. Public officials. Intellectuals. Military personnel. Anyone around whom resistance might coalesce. In just twelve months, an estimated 60,000 Estonians were murdered outright or deported to Soviet gulags. That number included Raul’s grandfather and his grandfather’s three brothers.
When Estonia finally regained its independence, Raul helped establish the Institute of Historical Memory to remind future generations not to take freedom for granted. The wisdom of that sentiment became evident when Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022.
Estonians like Raul harbor no illusions about what Vladimir Putin intends for the rest of the former Soviet Bloc if he succeeds in Ukraine. Over the last two years, they have committed to providing aid to the Ukrainians valued at more than two percent of the Estonian gross domestic product.
My wife, Alice Wood, with Raul Rebane at the Memorial to the Victims of Communism in Tallinn, Estonia.
Recently, Putin expressed his displeasure by placing Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas on a “wanted list” for “desecrating historical memory” after her government ordered the removal of old Soviet monuments left behind from the fifty-year occupation. This was alarmingly similar to accusations Putin directed towards the Ukrainian government on the eve of the Russian invasion two years ago.
As the Paris Olympics approach, Raul hopes to provide Estonians with a welcome bit of distraction by helping Johannes Erm contend for a medal. But the war in Ukraine and the tragic past of his own country will never be far from his mind. “This is our history” he once explained. ”Invasions and a flattened country. It’s in our collective memory. We won’t forget, and never will.”
The wind keeper
In The Odyssey, a gent named Aeolus is in charge of the four winds. In the world of American discus throwing, that would be Caleb Seal, who runs Throw Town Ramona, a facility near Tulsa, Oklahoma, which Caleb describes as ‘the windiest part of the United States in April.”
The Throw Town facility was constructed with those winds in mind. It features three cages facing different directions so throwers can best take advantage of whatever Mother Nature has to offer on a particular day. Coach Seal believes the spring weather at Throw Town can provide a high-level thrower with a five-meter bump–which can come in handy in an Olympic year when the qualifying marks are 64.50m for women and 67.20m for men.
Josh Syrotchen, Alex Rose, and Coach Seal celebrating big throws last April at Throw Town. Photo courtesy of Coach Seal.
On April 12-14, Throw Town will host a World Athletics bronze-level comp where athletes can take a crack at those qualifiers while picking up ranking points and possibly a chunk of the $30,000 in prize money available that weekend.
One thrower sure to appear is two-time Olympian Alex Rose, who broke the 70-meter barrier at Throw Town last April.
Alex works full time as a sales engineer, and he’d been especially busy in the days leading up to the 2023 Throw Town comp. A training seminar allowed him time for exactly one hour of lifting and zero hours of throwing the week of the meet. But one aspect of his throwing style might have made Alex the perfect guy to take advantage of the Oklahoma winds.
“I throw very low compared to most guys,” he explained recently. “And my disc travels very fast. At the Worlds in Doha, I was clocked at one of the fastest speeds ever on a 61-meter throw that stayed twelve feet off the ground. But at Ramona, the winds lifted my throws up to what for most people is the normal height. I took a warmup on the first day that weekend, and said, ‘Oh my god, that looks like how I’ve always wanted to throw!’”
In the first of two competitions that weekend, Alex raised his PB from 67.48m to 69.41m.
The next day was sunny and maybe ten degrees warmer, which allowed Alex to wear his spandex kit. Properly attired, he hit 70.39m.
That throw, he said later, meant “everything.”
“It was a huge goal of mine to break 70 meters. It’s one of those bucket list throws that you never think you’re going to get. But it was the best wind I’ve ever seen, and I hit it well and it just kept going and going. It was a career moment for me, especially with everything I’d been through the past year.”
That would include the birth of his son and managing the stress of driving approximately 750 miles per week for work. Alex says his efforts to find throwing and lifting facilities while on the road have made him a “master at Google Maps,” but he considers himself lucky when he’s able to squeeze two lifting and three throwing sessions into a week. That’s a clear disadvantage when competing against athletes who train full time, but he’s never regretted his decision to start a family and career during his prime athletic years.
“There was a moment when I had to make the choice,” he recalled. “Do I focus on throwing and risk a late start to my family, and maybe struggle to help support my family, or do I try to do my best given the circumstances?”
He chose the latter option, and has somehow managed to balance family, work, and throwing well enough to make the final at the last two World Championships.
This summer, he hopes to make his first Olympic final, and will begin his season back at Throw Town where he is likely to be joined by other world class throwers looking to smash PBs while picking up valuable world-ranking points.
Will Mother Nature cooperate?
“Heck yes,” says Coach Seal. “They don’t call it ‘tornado alley’ for nothing.”
Book Update
Training for Gold, the Plan that made Daniel Ståhl Olympic Champion is available in both print and eBook editions!
Recently, Coach Garry Power of Ireland kindly posted the following review:
This maybe a niche book in terms of being about a discus thrower and the plan to achieve the ultimate in sport – an Olympic Gold – but it is so much more. The book provides a philosophical insight into meeting the needs of an individual athlete. It is open and honest. Both authors have excelled in achieving a balance of theory and philosophy or art and science. I loved it.
With fifteen-hundred years of literary tradition behind them, the Irish know what they’re talking about when it comes to books, so I’m not going to argue with the man. Nor should you!
In Local News
My dear friend Jim Aikens built a hugely successful throwing program at Fremd High School in the suburbs of Chicago before retiring to Dallas, Texas, to hug his grandchildren and dodge fire ants. He left behind a legacy of excellence and kindness, which I am happy to report has been continued by one of his finest throwers from back in the day, Ken Kemeny, who is currently coaching at St. Charles North High.
In fact, we like Joe so much, we have decided to steal his idea and form a summer throwing club, this one to be called the Throw Big Throw Far Chicago Club.
Expert instruction will be available in the shot, disc and hammer beginning in June, along with ample opportunities to compete. It’s a great chance to spend the summer months sharpening your throwing technique while hanging out with fellow throws nerds.
Photo courtesy of Matthew Quine for Diamond League AG
What is it that makes Australians so nice? Do the crocodiles eat all the mean people there? Or does growing up around koala bears naturally make folks more relaxed and outgoing?
We’ll never know.
One thing’s for sure, though. I greatly enjoyed speaking with members of the Australian contingent at the 2023 Diamond League Final.
The women’s jav kicked off the comp at 11 a.m. on a lovely Saturday morning in Eugene. At that moment, it was 5 a.m. Sunday in Sydney, which is where 2023 World Championships bronze medalist Mackenzie Little lives and trains. I might have been a tad grouchy were I experiencing the level of jet lag that Mackenzie and her coach, Angus McEntyre, must have been feeling at that moment, but they appeared to be having a wonderful time, smiling and laughing whenever she bopped over for a quick chat at the rail between attempts.
Photo courtesy of me.
Mackenzie did not have her best stuff on this day. She set a PB of 65.70m at the Lausanne Diamond League Meeting earlier this season, and went 63.38m in winning her Budapest bronze, but she reached the 60-meter line only once in Eugene and settled for a best of 61.24m to take third behind Worlds champ Haruka Kitaguchi and fellow Australasian Tori Peeters.
That did not, however, harsh Mackenzie’s mellow. She was happy and gracious during a post-comp chat.
“I had a good time,” she admitted. “Not because I got the throws I wanted necessarily, but this core group of throwers has gotten quite close and I was excited watching them.”
When asked why the javelin ladies seem to get on so well, Mackenzie explained, “You can’t have an ego when you throw jav. I think we all know how frustrating it can be sometimes, so we understand each other.”
The most frustrating time for Mackenzie came when she returned to Australia after a stellar career representing Stanford, for whom she was NCAA champion in 2018 and 2019.
The transition from collegiate to pro athlete can be tricky, and Mackenzie had trouble finding her footing. Lingering shoulder and elbow problems did not help. She reached out to McEntyre on the recommendation of the head Australian jav coach, but her level of frustration gave him pause.
“I think we can make this work,” he told her at the time, “But I can’t do much if you’re stuck in a negative headspace.”
“She was,” McEntyre recalls, “a bit lost. I was coaching one of her good friends, a javelin thrower named Chrissie Grun, and Mackenzie told Chrissie, ‘I don’t know if I can do this anymore.’ But Chrissie said, ‘Yes, you can, and Angus is someone you can work with.’”
It was a plus that Coach McEntyre’s “day job” was running a chiropractic clinic, so he was able to help Mackenzie mend as they got to know each other. Looking back, he says “it was the chiropractic that started the relationship. During the Covid period we built up her shoulder and elbow, which also helped us build trust.”
In October of 2020, she reached 60 meters for the first time in two years, hitting a PB 61.47m at a comp in Sydney.
She PB’d again during the Olympic qualification round a year later in Tokyo, and ended up finishing eighth in the final. McEntyre says they’ve been “on cruise control since,” with only the occasional “hiccup” along the way.
At the 2022 Worlds, Mackenzie squeaked through qualifying in 12th place, then hit a 63.22m PB on her opener in the final. She was unable to build on that though, and finished in fifth, just five excruciating centimeters short of the podium.
This summer, she started slowly in the Budapest qualification round before bashing 63.45m on her third attempt, then started slowly again in the final. A best of 61.41m had her in fifth after three rounds, but this time she was able to keep climbing. “I learned a lot over the past year,” she said later. “And I was not going to be fifth again.”
Mackenzie produced her best throw on her last attempt, a 63.38m toss that won her the bronze.
And here I will tell you something crazy.
Mackenzie fought her way to the top of her sport while at the same time attending medical school. She is preparing for a career as a surgeon, and took her final exam on the flight from Sydney to Eugene for the DL final.
When asked how she managed this seemingly impossible task, Mackenzie shrugged. “Everyone in athletics has their passions outside. Mine just happens to be a little more structured. But I have a little more help than the average person with my coach taking care of me.”
Having played rugby at a high level while undertaking his chiropractic studies, McEntyre says he was able to relate to the challenges Mackenzie faced trying to balance athletics and academics.
“The biggest challenge for me,’ he says, “is to make sure she doesn’t get cooked or exhausted. I’ve always been careful around exam weeks, but it helps that the study side is more highly strung for her, so it can be a bit of a break when we switch to jav mode.”
McEntyre’s duties have included helping Mackenzie on practice quizzes, sometimes at unlikely moments. During early warmups prior to competing in Budapest, for example.
“We were having a contest to see who could get the most questions right,” he explained. “I guess most people might think that’s weird.”
Not as weird as being lucid and engaging while jet-lagged, as both “Macs” were on this exquisite afternoon.
“I’ve come to comps a little jet lagged and a little tired before,” Mackenzie told me. “It just builds my confidence. There’s no excuse for not throwing well. I am ready, though, for a big sleep.”
And with that, she left the shade of the media tent and strode off into a sun almost as bright as her future.
Photo courtesy of Marta Gorczynska for Diamond League AG
Another amicable Aussie competing in Eugene was discus thrower Matt Denny, a man who has mastered the art of throwing big when it counts. In 2018, for example, he produced a lifetime best of 64.03m to win the Australian Championships. A year later, he repeated as Australian champ with another PB, this time 65.28m, which he topped at the Doha Worlds by launching 65.43m to take sixth. He broke 67 meters for the first time during the Olympic final in 2021, and 68 meters for the first time this summer in Budapest.
Denny’s coach, Dale Stevenson, says that some people are just “exceptional competitors,” and Matt is one of them. “His happy place,” according to Stevenson, “is out there competing against the top athletes. It brings the best out of him.”
That was evident in Eugene, where Denny injected some much-needed brio into an otherwise subdued competition. He did his best to engage the crowd before each attempt, and refused to take it personally when they ignored him prior to his third throw. (The men’s 800 meters was about to begin and this was, after all, Eugene.)
The 66.36m he produced on that attempt put Denny in third place behind Kristjan Čeh and Daniel Ståhl, the twin Everests of the event.
A lesser individual might have been content with such a throw, coming as it did at the end of a loooong season. For unexplained reasons, winter here is summer in Australia, and Denny’s first comp took place way back on February 11th.
But Coach Stevenson knows his man, and throwing against giant World Champions (Kristjan, Daniel and Andrius Gudžius have won every World title since 2017) did in fact bring out the best of Denny on this gorgeous afternoon in Eugene.
He jumped ahead of Ståhl by a centimeter with a 67.37m toss in round four, then blasted a new PB of 68.43m on his final attempt to barge past Čeh for the title of 2023 Diamond League Champ, a win Denny described afterwards as “really satisfying.”
“You idolize the greats,” he explained. “You put them on a pedestal. Especially Daniel, who is probably the greatest ever as a competitor. So it was a special moment to get the win and have Daniel be the first guy to give me a hug and congratulate me. It reminded me of how good a community this is, for them to be like, ‘Lets go get some beers!’”
As to the varying levels of crowd support, Denny said he learned from Olympic and World champ high jumper Gimbo Tamberi that it’s best to get people’s attention by yelling before asking them to clap. He tried this before his sixth attempt and drew a spirited response. The extra bit of energy he absorbed from the crowd was all Denny needed on a day when he felt ready to rumble.
“I had some warmups of around 65 meters,” he explained. “And I know I’m in good nick if I’m doing that. When the comp began, I kept falling out of my delivery, but I knew there was something there.”
The next step will be getting on the podium at an Olympics or Worlds, no easy task with Čeh, Ståhl, and Mykolas Alekna throwing at historically high levels. With those three in the mix, it could conceivably take 70 meters to get on the stand in Paris and Tokyo.
In an effort to raise his game, Denny added a wrinkle to his technique this season by setting up for the throw with his right foot offset a bit then stepping forward after his windup. You’ve heard of the “Crouser slide”? Let’s call this the “Denny step.” If you say it fast like it’s one word it sounds pretty cool. Denny-step. Denny-step. Denny-step. See?
Matt and Dale, if you pursue a trademark, I’d like a t-shirt.
Dale says the Denny-step evolved to help Matt keep his hips “underneath his shoulders on entry,” and it might not be the end of their tinkering.
“We’re playing around with other variations, too,” he explained. “We’ll experiment with some of those during the Aussie domestic season from January to April.”
Dale did not divulge the exact nature of what they’ll be trying, but according to internet sources, he and Denny are considering everything from learning to cuss in Lithuanian to a never-before-seen discus move known as the “Kick-the-Crotch-of-Kristjan.”
In the meantime…
Are you free on 10-12th November?
If so, join me in beautiful Tallinn, Estonia, for the 2023 European Discus Conference which features excellent beer and major insights into the technique and training of guys like Daniel Ståhl, Sam Mattis, Kristjan Čeh, and Mykolas Alekna.
The coaches you see in the above photo will share their knowledge through a series of lectures and live demonstrations and, even better, you can ask follow-ups or just shoot the breeze with them and other coaches from all over the world while dining or maybe doing the backstroke at the amazing Tallink Spa and Conference Hotel where the conference is held. Here’s a bird’s-eye view:
And see this person popping out of the water?
On November 10-12th that might be Gerd Kanter or Kristjan Čeh or Dane Miller. I’ll end here so you can start checking flights.
Camryn Rogers with hammer gold. Photo courtesy of Mo Saatara
Throw Canada
I’ve always admired Canadians for their bacon and civility, but how in the name of Gretzky did they suddenly turn into a hammer powerhouse?
It started with poop, actually.
The sweet smell of success
In 2002, Derek Evely, at the time head coach of the Kamloops Track and Field Club, received an email from a retired hockey player named Igor Chibirev who was contacting Derek on behalf of his father-in-law, a former Soviet hammer coach who wanted to immigrate to Canada.
“He didn’t say his father-in-law’s name,” remembered Evely. “But he referred to him as the ‘coach of Sedykh,’ so I was like, ‘Oh my god, that’s Bondarchuk!’”
The “Sedykh” referred to in the email was Yuriy Sedykh, the two-time Olympic gold medalist and longtime World Record holder in the hammer. His coach, Anatoliy Bondarchuk, was and still is considered by many to be the world’s foremost hammer expert.
Once Evely did some detecting to make sure he wasn’t being pranked, he called Igor and found out that Bondarchuk, widely known as “Dr. B”, was currently coaching in Kuwait but wanted to move closer to his daughter, who lived with Igor in Calgary. Igor found Evely by googling the words “hammer” and “Canada.”
Derek Evely, Dr. B, and Dylan Armstrong. Photo courtesy of Derek Evely.
That search initially yielded the name “Dylan Armstrong,” the 2000 World U20 hammer silver medalist. Further research led Igor to Evely, who was Armstrong’s coach.
Excited by the possibility of bringing Dr. B to Kamloops, Evely set about finding a way to pay him. He asked for assistance from the provincial and national federations but was turned down.
That left Evely with no choice. He would resort to poop.
For years, the Kamloops club had done an annual fundraiser where they delivered manure to local farmers, gardeners, anyone really who found themselves in need of a load of crap.
“By that point,” he recalls, “we’d been doing the manure sale for five years and it had really taken off. We’d take orders for weeks in advance, then deliver it during the first weekend of April. It got so popular that we were making fifty grand every spring.”
Evely decided to take a shot and offered Dr. B $33,000 from his poop proceeds along with a free room in his basement. Dr. B accepted.
That summer, Evely traveled to Paris as part of the Canadian team for the 2003 Worlds, then took a train to Hungary where Dr. B was presenting at an IAAF clinic.
He brought a contract for Dr. B to sign, and was invited to attend a training session during which he sat between Dr. B and fellow hammer legend Pál Németh while newly-minted World champ Yipsi Moreno took some throws.
Evely remembers Moreno’s coach being so intimidated by the presence of Németh and Bondarchuk that he hid behind a post for the entire session.
Dr. B agreed to make the move to Kamloops following the 2004 Olympics. At the time, he was coaching 2002 U20 Worlds silver medalist Ali Mohamed Al Zenkawil, and wanted to mentor him through his first Games.
Ill health further delayed Dr. B’s arrival, but finally, in the spring of 2005, he made the move. He arrived the weekend of the manure sale.
“That weekend is always nuts,” says Evely. “I picked Dr. B and Igor up from the airport in a passenger van that was loaded with manure. They were looking at each other like, ‘What the..?’”
Evely dropped Dr. B at his house then went on distributing poop until late that night.
“I got home and just wanted to go to bed, but when I knocked on his door to check on him, he handed me four pages of what looked like gobbledygook. It turns out he’d spent the day with a Russian/English dictionary trying to translate his training theories so he could publish them as a book.”
Every night for the next six months, Evely sat next to Dr. B at a computer trying to find a way to clearly enunciate his methods in English. They did not end up publishing a book, but Evely eventually developed an online course based on their collaboration.
A year or so after Dr. B’s arrival in Canada, Evely left Kamloops to take a coaching assignment in Edmonton, and Dr. B took over as Dylan Armstrong’s full time coach. Dylan, by then, had become primarily a shot putter, and under Dr. B’s tutelage went on to win a bronze medal at the 2008 Olympics, a silver medal at the 2011 World Championships, and a bronze medal at the 2013 World Championships.
Use the force, Luke
After hanging up his throwing shoes, Dylan went into coaching. He continued to learn from Dr. B, and dreamed of some day using that system to produce a champion hammer thrower.
“I’ve been around hammer my whole life,” he told me during a recent phone conversation. “I understood it, understood what I did wrong and what I did right when I was a hammer thrower. And with all the knowledge I got from Dr. B, I felt like I could do something special if I could just find the right guy.”
The “right guy,” in Armstong’s mind, had to be tall.
“You look at the top throwers,” he says, “the guys that produce fantastic results like Ryan Crouser and Daniel Ståhl, and they are tall and fast, not short and fast. I knew if I had a shorter athlete with some speed, I could get them to 75 or 76 meters, but when you have someone with levers and a good training system, that’s ideal.”
Dylan found his man at a local meet in British Columbia. His name was Ethan Katzberg.
At the time, Katzberg was 6’3” and growing, but like a lot of tall young guys, very skinny.
“He looked like a high jumper,” Dylan recalls. “But when I saw him throw, I was like ‘Man, that guy can move!’ I pointed him out to a buddy of mine and said I thought I could get that kid to throw 80 meters some day, and he was like, ‘That’s crazy talk!’ But I didn’t care. To me, all Ethan needed was a long term plan and a good environment with good support and he’d be something special.”
Dylan Armstrong and Ethan Katzberg in Budapest. Photo courtesy of Dylan Armstrong.
Even Dylan, though, was surprised at how quickly Ethan developed. Per the World Athletics site, here is Ethan’s progression since 2019:
2019: 55.72m
2021: 69.75m
2022: 76.36m
2023: 81.25m
According to Dylan, several factors allowed Ethan to improve so swiftly. First, “he’s very coordinated and coachable. If I tell him I need it an inch higher here or an inch lower there, he can do it.”
Also, Ethan possesses a remarkable “talent for development.”
“The way Ethan is wired genetically, I can peak him really fast,” Dylan says, “and we can peak multiple times per year, which is something a lot of athletes can’t handle. You can have a guy with the same skills and body type, but they might need seventy or eighty or even a hundred sessions to reach peak condition, so it takes them a lot longer to develop.”
Ethan also possesses a rare ability to remain calm under pressure, a trait he first displayed at the 2022 Commonwealth Games where he PB’d to take the silver medal.
Dylan was not surprised when his angular apprentice showed poise that day in Birmingham. “Ethan,” he pointed out, “is from Vancouver Island. So, he’s laid back.”
But performing well at a Commonwealth Games is one thing. Standing up under the pressure of a World Championships against the likes of Poland’s Wojciech Nowicki and Pawel Fajdek is quite another matter. Those gents came into Budapest with a dozen World and Olympic medals between them, and no one would have blamed Ethan, a twenty-one-year-old World Champs rookie, had he wilted in their presence.
Luckily, Dylan began preparing Ethan for such a scenario earlier this season. In order to “normalize competing against the world’s best,” he took Ethan to meets like the LA Grand Prix where he faced Nowicki, top American Rudy Winkler, and Olympic and World medalist Eivind Henricksen. They then embarked on a European tour featuring comps in Germany, Poland, France, and Norway.
Dylan also used the trip to impart the hard lessons he’d learned during his own career as a thrower. “We’d talk one-on-one on the train in Germany or at our hotel or during lunch, and I’d take him through all the possible scenarios that can come up at big meets. What happens if there’s a delay because the laser breaks or the hundred meters is about to start, for example. You can lose focus and things can go sideways pretty quickly if you’re not ready for that stuff.”
Ethan demonstrated his readiness in round one of qualifying in Budapest by launching an 81.18m PB.
After that throw, Ethan and Dylan went immediately to the warmup track where Ethan took another eight tosses and got in a quick lift. This was in keeping with his normal training routine. “You have to complete your session,” says Dylan. “It’s important to stay regimented and not throw anything out of whack.”
The day of the final, Ethan informed his coach that he felt “really good,” then went out and hit 80.18m and 80.02m on his first two attempts.
It was, according to Dylan, the most exciting hammer comp he’d seen. “Being there in a country that loves hammer and supports the throws, was amazing. They had so many people there for Bence Halász, it was almost like we stole the show from the 100-meter final. Right about the time the 100-meters was supposed to start, Halász went 80.82m, and people were going crazy. They were like, ‘Oh, the 100-meters is on? Great. Now, let’s get back to the hammer.”
After three rounds, Ethan was in third behind Halász and Nowicki. When he and Dylan spoke before his fifth attempt, Dylan reminded him to “be patient. Keep the right foot on the ground a little longer and let the ball stretch on you.”
Ethan then stepped in and launched another PB, this time 81.25m. It ended up being enough to earn him gold.
“He put a little more cream on the end of that one,” says Dylan. “But all his throws felt relatively easy to him. He told me later that he could have gone further, but I just said ‘Let’s get back home, take a rest, debrief, and get ready for next year.’”
World Championships medalists Wojciech Nowicki, Ethan Katzberg, and Bence Halász. Photo courtesy of Dylan Armstrong
Make mine a double
The fun resumed three days later as 2022 World silver medalist Camryn Rogers secured a spot in this year’s final by hitting 73.95m on her second attempt in qualifying.
For anyone thinking it is no big deal for a defending silver-medalist to advance, let me point out that neither defending champ Brooke Andersen nor 4x World and 3x Olympic champ Anita Wlodarczyk made it through qualifying.
The prospect of bombing out in prelims has, according to her coach Mo Saatara, “caused Camryn a lot of stress” in the past, so in spite of her success at the 2022 Worlds, they decided to focus on building qualification confidence this season.
At the Brutus Hamilton Invite last April for example, Mo and Camryn decided to mimic the pressure of a qualifying round by limiting her to three attempts (rather than the full six all competitors received) with the goal of surpassing 75 meters on each.
The result was the best series of Camryn’s career to that point: 77.00m, 76.04m, 77.30m.
A week later, at the Mt. SAC Relays, they took a different approach.
“After the Hamilton Invite,” Mo explained, “we said, ‘Ok, now you got through qualification, let’s see how you do if we treat Mt. SAC like the final.”
At a major championships, athletes are given the opportunity to take some early throws at a warm-up facility outside the main stadium. They are then transported to a call room and left to sit for the better part of an hour before being escorted into the competition venue. Once inside, they are generally allowed two or three warm-up throws before the comp begins. This is different, sometimes drastically so, from the procedure at a lesser comp like the Hamilton or Mt. SAC, where athletes receive a plethora of warm-up tosses just prior to competing.
As mentioned above, Dylan Armstrong took care in the months leading up to Worlds to talk Ethan Katzberg through championships protocol and alert him to all the possible stressors that might arise. On the day of the comp, they were ready to take a minimalist approach to warmups,
“With the adrenaline that comes from competing at a championships,” he says, “all an athlete needs is some stretching and those two throws inside the stadium, anyway. It’s best to preserve all the energy you can, especially when it’s thirty-four degrees and humid like it was in Budapest.”
Mo advocates a similar approach.
He says the problem with taking throws at the warmup track is that “you do a bunch of stuff then have to sit in the call room, and that can cause your rhythm to get weird.”
At Mt. SAC, he had Camryn rehearse for Budapest by doing a general warmup then sitting for an hour. Prior to competing, she took only two warm-up throws.
Apparently, that was enough, as Camryn produced the kind of series (77.84m, 75.61m, 76.79m, 76.03m, 75.37m, 77.14m) that would likely put her on the podium if she could match it at Worlds.
“The series was stable,” Mo said afterwards. “Which is critical. If you look at the great champions, they had stable technique they could repeat multiple times in a competition.”
Besides stability, any female hammer thrower with ideas of contending in Budapest would also need the ability to go big. The average winning throw from the five previous Worlds was 78.74m, and with Brooke Andersen improving her PB to 80.17m in May, 2019 champ DeAnna Price getting back into form after two years of battling injuries, Wlodarczyk also returning from injury, and defending bronze-medalist Janee’ Kassanavoid putting together another solid season, it was likely to take at least that distance to challenge for gold in 2023.
In Camryn’s third meet of the season, the USATF LA Grand Prix, she showed, with an assist from Dylan Armstrong, that she could bang with the best of them.
Mo, busy that weekend with NCAA regionals, received video updates from LA courtesy of Dylan, who was on site coaching Katzburg.
Mo could tell Camryn was ready for something big based on the videos Dylan sent him of her warm-up throws. Once the comp began, she “got a little tight and started having some problems with her orbit,” but with Dylan relaying corrections, Camryn found her rhythm and launched a PB 78.62m in round five.
“The field at UCLA is a little bit uphill,” Mo explained. “So that throw could have been even farther. Either way, she showed she can put a throw out there and beat some of the best women, which was important going into Worlds.”
Camryn surpassed 77 meters again twice in June while competing in Poland, then once more at the Canadian Championships in July.
Mo and Camryn did a pre-Worlds training camp at a facility near Barcelona, adapting to the time change and acclimating to the kind of heat they’d experience in Budapest. They were thrilled to see Katzberg take gold, an achievement that Mo says, “set the standard high” for Camryn.
Her first attempt in the Budapest qualification round went only 70.97m, a slight misstep that Mo attributes to a slight difference in the surface texture between the ring at the warmup track where they had practiced since arriving in Budapest and the competition ring inside the stadium.
“They were both good circles,” he says. “The one in the stadium was just a little faster, so Camryn had to get adjusted. After that first throw she said, ‘Whoa, what just happened?’ but she was feeling really good, so I just told her ‘Go take care of business and let’s get out of here.’”
She did, surpassing the automatic qualifying mark with her 73.95m toss.
As a side note, the unusual design of the cage was another factor the hammer throwers had to contend with.
German throws coach René Sack told me he’d seen athletes struggle with the same type of cage at a past German championships. “It feels different from a normal cage,” he explained, “because it is shaped like a rectangle”
American throws meister John Smith concurred. “Most cages are more of a semicircle,” he said when asked about the setup in Budapest. “But this one felt more like you were throwing out of a tunnel. That changes the thrower’s perception visually of how to get the throw out of the cage.”
The hammer cage in Budapest. During competition, the sides would be extended forward giving it a rectangular shape.
The main challenge though, according to both coaches, was the lack of support poles in the Budapest cage, which made it harder for the athletes to orient themselves when setting up for a throw.
According to Smith, a typical cage will have a pole “lined up dead center to the ring.” Without that reference point, throwers had to choose other landmarks to get themselves in the right spot.
JC Lambert, husband and coach of DeAnna Price, said they used the pre-meet walkthrough day in the stadium to try to figure out a suitable marker. They decided they couldn’t use the television camera stand that was set up behind the cage as it was slightly off center, so JC suggested lining up on one of the wheels attached to the cage as it appeared to be in just the right spot. All went well for DeAnna in qualification where she was one-and-done with a 76.25m toss, but JC realized something was amiss when she fouled her first two attempts in the final.
His view was obstructed by the television camera, but Smith was sitting in a different spot and realized right away that DeAnna was lining up incorrectly. He immediately texted a video to JC.
“Luckily,” JC recalled afterwards, “we had time before her third throw, so I called her over and said, ’Move three or four inches to the left.’ It turns out she had seen a chalk line on the ground and lined up on that assuming it was the center.”
DeAnna got her third attempt out of the cage and earned three more attempts with a distance of 73.28m, then got on the podium with a fifth-round toss of 75.41m. It was her first championships medal since claiming Doha gold in 2019, and so a truly lovely moment–but, the question lingers as to how far those first two attempts might have been had she gotten them out of the cage.
Camyrn’s college teammate Anna Purchase, had thrown from a similar cage at the 2022 European Championships, so she was able to give Cam and Mo a heads up going into Budapest. That seems to have helped, as Anna advanced to the final in this, her first Worlds, with a 71.31m qualifying toss, and Camryn made it through all six rounds of the final with no fouls.
With no Brooke or Anita in the final and DeAnna getting off to a rough start, the competition turned into what Mo describes as a “tactical contest.”
“We expected fireworks,” he said afterwards. “Like an MMA fight. I thought it might take 78 meters to get on the podium, so it was important for Camryn to start strong and establish herself.”
That she did, with a 77.22m blast that gave her a three-meter lead on the field. She followed that up with 77.07m in round two.
Between attempts, Mo says they “talked about simple stuff. I just wanted to keep her in her own zone and not have her get too analytical, just help her stay within her mindset, stay engaged, and be ready to respond.”
Mo Saatara and Camryn Rogers in Budapest. Photo courtesy of Mo Saatara.
In the end, she did not have to.
Janee’ Kassanavoid pushed Cam a bit with throws of 76.00m and 76.36m in rounds two and three, but no one besides Janee’, DeAnna, and Camryn touched 75-meters, so it ended up being a “North Americans only” podium.
Kudos, by the way, to Kassanavoid who put on a clinic this year on how to throw your best when it counts the most. She came to Budapest having thrown 76 meters on only two occasions in 2023, once at the Tucson Elite, and again at the fiercely competitive US Championships.
She struggled in qualifying, opening with 71.04m and a foul before advancing with 72.70m on her third attempt.
But after opening with a foul in the final, Janee’ found her steady and put together a nice series, backing up the two 76m tosses with two more over 75m.
It was a fine performance under what Mo calls, “the difficult mental conditions of a championships final.”
It’s interesting to note that besides being North American, all three medalists came through the NCAA system.
Mo says that competing in the US collegiate system “really shaped who Camryn is as a competitor. The mental side of competing for an NCAA title is extremely challenging. The regionals teach you how to qualify, and in the final you have to be stable while dealing with adversity. It’s a priceless experience for someone who wants to contend at the World level.”
Cam will head back to Berkeley this fall to continue training with Mo, while Ethan and Dylan get back to work in Kamloops.
Meanwhile, Canadian shot-putter Sarah Mitton, who took silver in Budapest, will be plotting with her coach Richard Parkinson to make it a full out Canadian gold rush in Paris.
More on Sarah in my next newsletter, which will focus on the recent Diamond League final.
Mitch and Ryan Crouser in Budapest. Photo courtesy of Mitch, Team USA and USATF.
Hold my cape
I spoke with Mitch Crouser by phone during the recent World Athletics Championships. His son Ryan had just taken gold with what Mitch described as, “the best throw of his career considering the circumstances.”
After winning his sixth US title in early July, Ryan embarked on a European tour consisting of three meets in eight days, all victories. His throws in those comps were, according to Mitch, “not great technically, but showed a lot of horsepower.” At the final stop, on July 23rd in London, Ryan was fighting a cold. “I talked to him on the phone,” Mitch recalled, “and he sounded terrible.”
Ryan assured his father that he “felt better than he sounded,” then went out and threw 23.07m.
“He was,” says Mitch, “starting to dial it in.”
After London, Ryan returned to his training base in Arkansas and produced one of his best practice sessions of the year, a pleasant surprise since normally, according to Mitch, Ryan’s practice distances would fall off a bit after returning from an overseas trip. “Everything,” he recalls, “was looking good for Budapest.”
But, the next morning Ryan called with unexpected news. His left calf was so sore he could barely walk.
At first, they assumed he’d suffered a muscle strain or tear, but an ultrasound detected no tissue damage. And it was strange, Mitch says, that Ryan had felt no pain during the workout. “Also,” he explained, “with a muscle tear, it should hurt worse when you try to walk, but in this case walking made it feel a little better.”
With the Worlds just three weeks away, Ryan began physical therapy including deep tissue massage, but he could not lift or throw. “It was really frustrating,” Mitch recalled. “Three weeks before Worlds is not the time to unload.”
Still thinking the problem was in a muscle or tendon, Ryan and Mitch got ready to fly to Serbia for a pre-Worlds training camp. But the night before they were meant to leave, Ryan’s physio and fishing buddy Andy Glidewell suggested getting a Doppler ultrasound to rule out the possibility of a blood clot which, according to the Centers for Disease Control, “can be a serious risk for some long-distance travelers.”
The scan revealed two clots in Ryan’s lower left leg.
Ryan called his father immediately. “Hey,” he said. “We’re not going to Budapest.”
Doctors provided by USATF and the USOC immediately put Ryan on a high dose of blood thinners, to which he responded well. The pain in his calf diminished, and within a day or two he could walk more comfortably.
But it was still hard to imagine him competing at Worlds. Getting to Budapest would require a long flight, which raised the possibility of one of the clots breaking up and causing a pulmonary embolism. And even if he made the trip, what were the odds that, after three weeks of enforced idleness, Ryan would be able to hold his own against Joe Kovacs, Tom Walsh, and Darlan Romani?
The doctors let the blood thinners work for a few days, then laid out the risks Ryan would face on an overseas flight. “It was,” Mitch says, “a “very sobering conversation.”
The effectiveness of the blood thinners, the size of the clots (small) and their location (at the end of a limb) all worked in Ryan’s favor, but the possibility remained that something could go wrong.
(I’d like to note that during a recent episode of the Throw Big Throw Far podcast, I incorrectly described the clots as “big.” As I was writing this article, Mitch notified me that one of the medical staffers they worked with heard the podcast and wanted to make it clear that the blood clots were actually small, deep vein thrombosis (DVT) clots. Had they been “big,” traveling to Budapest would have been out of the question for Ryan.)
After conferring with the doctors, Mitch and Ryan engaged in some heart-to-heart talks. With his calf starting to feel better, Ryan was confident that the nine months of preparation he’d put in before contracting the blood clots would allow him to be competitive at Worlds–if he could get there. “I can walk again,” he told his father. “I think I can still do something.”
They considered the odds, and decided to put their trust in the effectiveness of the blood thinners. Six days before the competition, they boarded a plane for Europe. On the advice of the doctors, Mitch and Ryan flew into Vienna so they could have access to the top-notch hospitals there in case Ryan needed care upon landing. He did not, and after the plane touched down, they traveled on to Budapest by car.
Upon arrival, Ryan did a brief “shakeout” session at a facility near the hotel. According to Mitch, “he looked pretty good technically. The pain in his calf was still there, but not nearly at the level it had been.”
A big moment came during their next training session, where Ryan took his first hard throws in three weeks.
“We needed to know what we were dealing with before competing,” Mitch explained. “So we cranked it up, and one thing we found out right away was that his throws from a static start were not what they had been.”
Shot put fans have gotten used to Ryan beginning competitions with at least one attempt from a static start before switching to his full windup and–as of the 2023 season–his now famous “Crouser slide.” It’s his way of setting his timing and posting a solid mark with very little risk of fouling. It can also be intimidating to the rest of the field when Ryan opens with a big throw from the static, as he did earlier this season at the LA Grand Prix, dropping a 23.23m first-round bomb on the way to setting his 23.56m World Record.
But after Ryan was unable to approach 22 meters with the static at the practice session in Budapest, he and Mitch decided to go exclusively with the slide in the competition.
The automatic qualifying mark was 21.40m, and if there was ever a day when Ryan needed to go one-and-done, this was it. With his lack of fitness and the final scheduled to take place that night, he needed to conserve energy. Of course, after the putters warmed up, a thunderstorm hit and delayed the competition for an hour.
When matters resumed, Ryan put his first attempt out to 21.48m.
He was first up that night in the final, and all eyes were on him as he stepped in the ring hoping, says Mitch, to “put some pressure on the field.”
Ryan’s 22.63m opener did just that, and with his competitors looking sluggish (The heat? The stress of having the qualification and final on the same day? The shock of seeing Ryan throw so far after being laid up for three weeks?) it seemed possible that the competition was over before it had begun in earnest.
But great athletes are not inclined to coast, and Ryan extended his lead with a 22.98m haymaker to begin round two.
Italy’s Leonardo Fabbri did his best to liven things up with a 22.34m PB in round three, but nobody else got within a meter of Crouser until Walsh (22.05m) and Kovacs (22.12m) found a little rhythm in the fifth stanza.
Then Fabbri, throwing directly before Crouser, dropped his fifth-rounder just at the front edge of the 23-meter line. (By the way, does anyone else remember the days when the idea of needing a 23-meter line at a World Championships would have been laughable?)
He fouled it, and fouled his sixth attempt as well. Then Ryan put an end to any “what if Fabbri had saved that throw?” speculation by going 23.51m on the final put of the night.
This one is definitely a keeper. Photo courtesy of Mitch Crouser.
“After all he’d been through,” Mitch said, “and with his static throw down a meter, he caught that one as close to perfect as he could.”
Since returning home, Ryan has remained on blood thinners. He’ll have regular Doppler scans to make sure the clots are dissolving, and will see how he feels over the next couple of weeks before deciding whether to compete at the Diamond League final in mid-September.
Ladies and gentlemen, your Budapest medalists. Photo courtesy of Mitch Crouser.
As to what caused the clots in the first place, it’s hard to say. According to Mitch, clots do not run in the family, so they might have resulted from an unlucky combination of factors. The flight home from London could have contributed. And after he’d been back for a couple of days, Ryan realized he’d lost his sense of smell. which might mean he’d contracted Covid.
(Let me take a second here to correct another mistake I made on the podcast. When discussing possible causes of Ryan’s blood clots, I stated definitively that he was suffering from Covid after his European trip. Not true. Losing one’s sense of smell suggests but does not prove Covid.)
Anyway, according to the American Heart Association, Covid increases the likelihood of contracting blood clots. So does dehydration, and the day before his calf started hurting, Ryan did two hard training sessions in 100-degree heat.
He may never know the exact cause, but either way, few who witnessed the men’s shot comp at this World Championships will ever forget it.
Family Man
Not long ago, I realized that it had been ages since I’d caught up with Cory Martin. so I gave him a shout. He took my call while driving from Louisville, Kentucky, back home to Bloomington, Indiana, after putting in a day’s work at his new job as throwing coach for the University of Louisville Cardinals.
In his younger years, Cory was part of a remarkable group of Auburn University throwers coached by Jerry Clayton. Among them were Jake Dunkelberger, the 2007 NCAA hammer champ, and Edis Elkasević, the NCAA indoor and outdoor shot winner in 2005 (and later the coach of discus great Sandra Perković).
The Martin family. Photo courtesy of Cory.
“It was an extremely competitive environment,” Cory recalled. “Edis and I used to have ab workout contests after our lifts to see who would quit first. Having him around helped me a lot. I was meant to be a hammer guy when I went to Auburn, but because I got to throw against Edis every day and found myself pushing to be as good as him, I ended up becoming a pretty good shot putter.”
“Pretty good” indeed. At the 2008 NCAA Outdoor Championships, Cory blasted a 20.35m PB on his last attempt to snatch the title from Arizona State’s Ryan Whiting. Two days earlier, he’d thrown a final-round PB in the hammer to take the win over Dunkelberger.
That summer, Cory embarked on a professional career, joining a powerful group of American putters, guys like Adam Nelson, Christian Cantwell, Reese Hoffa, and Whiting, as they plied their trade across the globe.
It was not an easy transition.
“The biggest thing facing anyone coming out of college,” he says, “is the institutional support goes away. After four years of being a priority and having a set routine, suddenly you’re on your own. You have to figure out your own schedule, arrange your own travel. A lot of times when you go to meets, your coach isn’t with you. My first year on the circuit, my agent called one day and said, ‘Hey, I got you into a hammer meet in Brazil, but you’ve got to fly to Miami tomorrow to get a visa.’ The next day, I was sitting by myself in a La Quinta Inn in Miami thinking ‘What am I doing here?’ I called my wife and said, ‘I’m coming home,’ but she kicked me in the butt and the next day I went to Brazil and threw a PB. I was really lucky to have her in my corner.”
When newbies on the pro circuit ask his advice, Cory tells them the first two years might be tough, but things will get better if they keep grinding.
Cory had his own breakthrough during his second year on the tour when he made the US squad for the 2010 Indoor Worlds and threw 22.10m outdoors at the Tucson Elite meet.
His best finish at an international championships came at the 2013 Outdoor Worlds in Moscow, where he came in ninth. But by then, Cory was just about ready to move on from the “me first” world of elite athletics.
“Not long ago,” he recalled, “I talked to a thrower who was at Auburn when I was training there as a pro and he said, ‘Don’t take this wrong, but you were kind of mean in those days.’ Looking back, I can understand why he thought that, because as a pro you have to be selfish and you can’t apologize for it. You feel the pressure of trying to make a living, and if you don’t do well, you’re out of the sport. So you have to be self-centered, you have to build up an ego for protection. In 2010, when I had my best year, I was really selfish. That’s just the reality of the sport.”
But he and Taryn wanted to start a family, and Cory was ready to follow his father into coaching. Cory’s dad had made his mark as a high school football coach, but Cory had his sights set on the NCAA,
In 2014, he was hired by the legendary Ron Helmer to take over the throwing program at Indiana University, a dream job that allowed Cory and Taryn to settle in the town of Bloomington, Indiana, where they’d both grown up.
Years went by, and Cory employed the knowledge he’d gained from coaches like Clayton and John Smith to produce numerous All-Americans, Big Ten champions, and school record-holders. Meanwhile, he and Taryn welcomed a son and a daughter into the world.
The winds of change started blowing in the spring of 2022, though, when Helmer announced that the 2023 season would be his last. Whoever took over the program would want to bring in their own staff, and the prospect of moving on led to many late-night conversations in the Martin household.
“I was confident with the coaching part,” Cory explained. ”I knew wherever I ended up, I could get things going in the right direction. The hard question was, ‘How would this affect our family?’”
Cory and Taryn tried to keep everything normal around their house as they weighed different options. Earlier this summer, Cory decided to accept an offer from the University of Louisville. Impressed by the city, the facilities, and the support for athletics on the part of both the university and the community, they were excited about this new chapter in Cory’s career.
When it came time to tell the kids, they weren’t too worried about how their daughter Harper would react. She was four and hadn’t started school yet, so relocating would probably have less of an impact on her. But their son Knox was seven, and moving to Louisville would require him to leave behind his school, his friends and his little league teammates.
Fortunately, Louisville is home to the Louisville Slugger Museum and bat factory, a baseball shrine along the lines of the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, and a visit there was enough to convince Knox that moving to Kentucky might not be a bad idea. “I want to say we visited the museum on a Wednesday,” Cory recalled. “And after our tour, Knox asked if we could move by Friday.”
Knox Martin, reporting for duty. Photo courtesy of Cory.
Buying and selling a home is no simple matter though, which explains the long daily commute. Four or five days a week throughout the summer, Cory hit the road at 6am to make the two-hour drive to Louisville. In the evenings, he’d do his best to get back to Bloomington in time to help Knox hone his hitting stroke. There were days when Cory found himself wondering if he should just get an apartment in Louisville while he and Taryn navigated the logistics of moving, but he couldn’t stand the idea of not seeing Taryn and the kids every night.
Another tricky aspect of making the jump to Louisville was that it meant leaving behind the throwing family Cory had established at IU.
After Heller’s announcement, Cory’s group knew that he would likely be moving on as well. That created some anxiety, which Cory did his best to manage as the 2023 campaign approached.
It was only natural for Cory’s IU kids to want to follow him to his new destination. Getting to throw for him was, after all, a big reason why most had come to Indiana in the first place. But, even in the era of the transfer portal, switching schools is no easy matter. For one thing, as the 2023 season progressed, Cory still had no idea where he would end up. And, once he did secure a new position, there was no guarantee that his new school would have scholarships available to offer any of his throwers who wanted to transfer.
Harper at the plate. Photo courtesy of Cory.
One IU thrower who felt especially anxious about her future was Jayden Ulrich, who developed into a 59-meter discus thrower under Cory’s tutelage. They had built a close bond, and even after drawing a lot of interest from other schools through the portal, Jayden told Cory, “Wherever you’re going, I’m going.”
Cory says he encouraged Jayden to explore all options, but in the end was thrilled when she was in fact able to follow him to Louisville. She’ll have two years of eligibility remaining, and Cory says the “sky’s the limit” for Jayden in the disc.
The third piece of the puzzle Cory faced was how to create a new throwing family at Louisville. A priority this summer was sitting down with each returning Louisville thrower for a one-on-one meeting during which he reminded them that he was experiencing change just as they were, and promised to come into his new position with an open mind and treat each of them as individuals.
“It was fun,” he says, “to talk to the kids and find some commonalities to help them get comfortable with me. Coaching is all about communication, and going forward I’ve got to figure out the best way to reach each athlete.”
Having Jayden on board should speed the process. “My new throwers,” he explained, “can look at Jayden and say, ‘Oh, that’s what he means,’ which will be a big help.”
The bird might be angry but the kids are happy, and that’s what counts! Photo courtesy of Cory.
“Wherever you’re coaching and whoever you’re coaching,” he continued. “It’s all about being an educator and understanding what motivates a kid.”
“And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from practicing baseball with my son in our backyard,” he says, “it’s patience.”
On that note, we said our goodbyes so Cory could turn his attention back to the road. The one that led to his family.
They’re back. Almost.
Something besides the world’s best beer is brewing in Germany these days.
After a tough 2022 European Senior Championships at which German throwers took just two medals (jav gold by Julian Webber, disc silver by Kristin Pudenz), and consecutive World Championships with no German men in the shot final and no German women on the shot podium, it appears that a batch of fresh talent is fermenting.
At the recent European U20 Championships held in Jerusalem, German teens tossed their way to nine medals including two in both the men’s and women’s shot, and a sweep in the women’s disc.
Among the most promising of those youngsters is Nina Chioma Ndubuisi, who took shot put gold with a throw of 17.97m.
Nina Chioma Ndubuisi. Photo courtesy of Sona Maleterova and European Athletics.
According to Christian Sperling, the German national shot and disc coach for juniors, Nina was a heptathlete until 2021. She decided to focus exclusively on throwing after finishing third in the shot at the European U20s in Tallinn with a mark of 15.71m, and has improved quite a bit since even though she currently lacks the bulk and weight room strength associated with 18-meter shot putters.
“Nina,” according to Coach Sperling, “is very good in jumping and sprinting. This is why she is able to throw the shot so far with a body weight under 80 kilograms.”
Jerusalem bronze shot medalist Chantal Rimke. Photo courtesy of Sona Maleterova and European Athletics.
She and other young German throwers have also benefited from a series of training camps hosted by the federation where Coach Sperling says, “the best athletes in every developmental stage are together with the best experts in Germany.”
Those training camps were begun in 2022, as was an annual series of five developmental competitions called the “Deutscher Wurf-Cup.”
Will such efforts eventually pay off with senior European, World and Olympic medals?
According to American throws meister John Smith, who coached his wife Connie Price-Smith against the likes of Olympic and 3x World champion Astrid Kumbernuss during the glory days of German putting, the answer is yes.
Melina Wepiwe, Curly Brown, and Lea Bork swept the discus podium in Jerusalem. Photo courtesy of Getty Images and European Athletics.
Smith remembers when “nobody thought the day would come that American women would beat the Germans. A top German thrower would have been ashamed to lose to an American.”
Early adoption of the rotational shot technique eventually gave US throwers a leg up and put Germany in its current catch-up mode, he says, but they are now making a strong move to close the gap.
Jerusalem shot gold medalist Lasse Schulz. Photo courtesy of Sona Maleterova and European Athletics.
“They’ve gone missing for a few years in the shot,” he says, “but they’ve got a good young crop and it won’t be long before they reappear at the World level.”
It’s interesting to note that Nina has accepted a scholarship to the University of Texas, where she will be coached by Zeb Sion and presumably train in proximity to Val Allman, who along with newly-minted champ Lagi Tausaga, has helped keep German women off the discus podium at the last two Worlds.
Will Nina flourish in the American collegiate system, learn the secrets behind American rotational dominance and use them to accelerate the revival of German shot putting?
Possibly.
And if so, will the Germans reciprocate by teaching us how to mass produce outstanding beer and delectable chocolate?
Personally, I would consider that a fair exchange.
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.