Category Archives: Interviews

The Monthly Meathead for January, 2024

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

It’s always something

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thar she blows

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was one problem. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally!

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

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

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

The plan that prepared Daniel to take Tokyo gold.

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

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

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

Camryn Rogers with hammer gold. Photo courtesy of Mo Saatara

Throw Canada

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

It started with poop, actually.

The sweet smell of success

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Use the force, Luke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2019:  55.72m

2021: 69.75m

2022: 76.36m

2023: 81.25m

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make mine a double

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mo advocates a similar approach. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the end, she did not have to.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until then, take it easy, eh?

The Monday Morning Meathead: September 4th edition

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.

The Monday Morning Meathead: June 26th Edition

Photo by me!

Two walks

“Everyone you meet here is someone.”

That’s what my friend Sean Denard, the throws coach at UCLA, told me one morning recently as we sipped iced tea in a hotel lobby in Austin, Texas.

We were in town for the 2023 NCAA meet, Sean to coach, me to spectate, and we’d found a pleasant place to relax during the heat of the day.

I’d been telling Sean about my walk home from the track the night before. Mike Myers stadium was a straight shot from our hotel, maybe a twenty-minute stroll along one of the avenues that connect the University of Texas campus with downtown Austin. 

But I have a terrible sense of direction, and after getting up at 4:30am for my flight, then scrambling around in the sweltering heat all evening covering the men’s hammer, javelin and shot comps, I found myself at 10:30pm wobbling along a nearly deserted street unsure of whether or not it would lead me back to the Westin. 

Luckily, I was not completely alone. There was one man walking in the same direction about twenty meters ahead, and a traffic light delayed him long enough for me to catch up. 

“Hello!” I said  “Is this the way to the downtown area?”

“Yes,” he replied, “I think so.”

That was invitation enough for me, and I fell into step alongside him.

I assumed he too had come from the meet, and he had. It turns out he coached at Maryland, so we spoke about their shot putter Jeff Kline who had finished 19th in that night’s comp. We spoke about the ways that joining the Big 10 Conference had changed Maryland athletics, and how the addition of USC and UCLA might cause further changes. We spoke of the difficulty universities face in balancing athletic opportunities for men and women. We spoke of the problem of homelessness that plagues Austin and so many other American cities. Before long, I’d forgotten about feeling tired and lost.

Then a car passed us and stopped at a light. 

“Hey,” my new acquaintance exclaimed. “That car has no driver!”

My first thought was, “Well, I’m not the only one delirious from the heat.” But I looked and saw he was right. It was a medium-sized car, white with cameras attached to the roof and nobody behind the wheel. The light changed and off it went, as did my new friend when he spotted his hotel one avenue over.

“He was a really nice guy,” I told Denard the next day. 

“That was Andrew Valmon,” he informed me. “You were walking with an Olympian.”

Denard was right. Andrew Valmon was not only an Olympian but, according to my Google machine, a two time gold-medalist in the 4×400 relay. He also helped set a World Record in that event at the 1993 World Championships.

Which got me thinking. Coach Valmon is a World Record holder, and I was able to catch up to him on our walk from the stadium. And not many people know this, but a couple of years ago I defeated 2016 Olympic discus champ Chris Harting in a spirited game of air hockey. Was this a trend? Could it be that I am just now entering my athletic prime?  Something to contemplate.

The second walk took place two days later. My wife Alice accompanied me on the trip to Austin but stayed back at the hotel on the first two nights of competition as she is averse to watching strangers run, jump and throw in 95-degree heat. The night of the discus final, though, was also the night of the men’s 5,000 meters, whose field included Parker Wolfe, the grandson of my wife’s beloved cousin. 

Parker ran a great race, so Alice was in fine spirits on our walk back to the Westin after the meet. The only thing that could make the night even better for her was making new friends and telling them about Parker. 

That’s how we ended up talking with Andrew Ferris, a distance coach at Iona. He happened to be walking in the same direction. He happened to pause at the same intersection. He happened to look like a distance guy. He stood no chance of avoiding us.

Before the light changed, Coach Ferris knew all about Parker, and we knew that Coach Ferris was originally from Australia. And you know how Australians are often stereotyped as good, friendly people? Coach Ferris fit that mold. When he found out I was a throws guy, he told me about his home club and how it served as sort of a throwing hub in Australia. 

“Lots of throwers stop by to train,” he said. “Koji Murofushi did a camp there once.”

Speaking of Australian stereotypes, I couldn’t resist asking him about another.

“I have to know,” I interjected as we resumed our stroll. “How in the hell do Australians survive when just about every creature there wants to kill you?’

“Ah, we’re used to it,” he replied, with a laugh. “But, you know which animal kills the most tourists?”

My wife never passes up a chance to disparage snakes, so that was her guess. I went with crocodiles.

“Nope. Conch shells.”

We were shocked.

“Yep. Tourists see a conch, they reach down to pick it up, but they don’t realize the creature inside of it is poisonous. Touch one, and you’re dead in fifteen minutes. Can’t get to a hospital in fifteen minutes, can you? Here’s my hotel.”

We wished Coach Ferris good night and good luck for the rest of the meet and on any future visits home as well. He shared one more quick story before we parted.

“When I was a little kid,” he told us, “maybe seven or eight years old, I was riding my bike and saw what I thought was a stick poking up from the ground. I smacked the stick with my hand, but it turned out to be a snake, an eastern brown snake, the most poisonous in Australia. I smacked it right in its head, but for some reason it didn’t bite me. I’d have been a goner if he had, so I’m lucky to even be here. Nice meeting you!”

With that, Coach Ferris disappeared into his hotel. But he wasn’t the only one feeling fortunate. Sometimes it takes a close encounter with a poisonous snake or killer conch to make a guy appreciate his luck, but for me walking hand in hand with my favorite person towards a cold beer on a sweltering night was reminder enough.

All in due time

This was Cal shot putter Jeff Duensing’s meet progression during the 2023 outdoor season:

18 March: 18.75m

1 April: 18.91m

15 April: 18.06m

29 April: 18.81m

13 May: 18.94M

24 May: 19.80m

7 June: 19.98m 

The 19.98m was more than a meter farther than his 2022 outdoor PB, and he hit that big throw when it counted the most: at the recent NCAA Championships.

Jeff Duensing competes in the Men’s Shot Put during the 2023 NCAA Track & Field Championships in Austin, TX. (Photo credit: Brendan Maloney / KLC fotos)

Every thrower dreams of having a huge breakthrough at the most important time of the year, so when I saw Jeff’s coach, Mo Saatara, the next day I asked him how they’d managed it.

“He finally believed me that he could throw far with rhythm,” Mo replied, and we shared a nice laugh but I needed more detail. Inquiring minds and all that. So I called Mo a few days later and he filled me in. 

“Every year,” he told me, “I sit down with my throwers and say ‘Okay, what is the next thing we need to improve?’ For sure, everyone can keep getting stronger each year, but it may be that a thrower needs to change their approach in certain ways. We try to target areas where they have the most room to develop and focus on one main thing. This year with Jeff, we decided to work on rhythm and timing.”

The effort Mo and Jeff put in during the fall and winter seemed to pay dividends right away as Jeff opened his indoor campaign with a 19.39m PB. At his next comp, though, he fell back to 18.09m, an indication that more work was required before the changes they’d made would hold up in competition.

At that point, they agreed to “sacrifice the beginning and middle of the outdoor season” and go back to working meticulously on Jeff’s rhythm. 

Mo says they “had to keep the training volume higher than normal” as the outdoor season began, “and this kept his performances low. We looked at what parts of his throw were off, and the main factor was the timing of his delivery. Working on that required a high volume of throwing, so we knew Jeff would not be in his best competition shape early in the season. But, one thing I’ve learned over the years is that in a technique event like the shot put, which takes a long time to master, you have to be willing to spend a longer time in certain training phases. A lot of people think you have to change the training stimuli every three-to-four weeks or even every two weeks, but to achieve results that last you have to give the athlete a chance to adapt. Sometimes, that means spending ten or twelve weeks in a phase of training.”

As you can see from the numbers cited above, Jeff’s competition results were not outwardly promising during March and April. 

But, Mo says Jeff showed definite signs of improvement at the Pac 12 meet in May, and his training numbers indicated he was rounding into form as regionals approached.

“We keep records of training results,” he explained, “and one thing we look at is performance trends in training because they indicate what you can do in competition. It’s not necessarily a direct correlation because in a competition you have a lot more adrenaline, so you don’t have to throw seventy feet in practice to throw it in a meet. But Jeff’s training results were getting better, and going into regionals I thought he could do somewhere between 19.60m and 20 meters. The 19.80m gave him confidence that he could compete with the best guys, and that really helped him in Austin.”

Going forward, Mo believes that Jeff will continue to improve.

“He gets overlooked sometimes because he’s only six feet tall, and he’s not flexible, so he doesn’t necessarily hit beautiful positions. But he’s explosive and coordinated, and he works really hard on technical mastery. And now, he understands the value of rhythm.” 

Victories, large and small

Annette Echikunwoke at the 2023 USATF NYC Grand Prix. Photo courtesy of USATF.

Two years ago, Annette Echikunwoke was napping in her room at a training center in Kisarazu, Japan, when she was awakened by a knock at her door. The visitor turned out to be a coach from the Nigerian national team there to inform her that because the Nigerian Federation had failed to administer the required number of drug tests in the weeks leading up to the Olympic Games, Annette and several of her teammates were no longer eligible to compete in Tokyo. It was her twenty-fifth birthday. She had been scheduled to make her Olympic debut three days later. 

One year ago, as the 2022 USATF Championships approached, Annette once again found herself in a precarious situation. After the Olympic debacle, she’d applied with World Athletics to switch her allegiance back to the United States. A week before the USATF Champs, she had still not received a definitive answer. 

“I would come out of practice,” she said recently when asked to reflect on those days, “and cry in my car because I felt so overwhelmed by all the uncertainty.” 

The Sunday before the hammer comp, Annette sat in church praying with one of her religious mentors. “She reminded me that it is up to God to open some doors and shut other doors, and if competing at USAs was meant to happen, it would happen. That prayer touched me and helped me handle the stress of not knowing.”

That Wednesday, Annette woke up at her place in Cincinnati where she lives and trains and saw a message on her phone informing her that she was cleared to compete. The hammer comp was on Thursday. In Eugene.

Somehow, she arranged a flight, made it through processing, tossed an SB of 73.76m and earned a spot on the US squad for Worlds.

The challenges Annette has faced this summer, so far anyway, have been much less dramatic. 

Last weekend’s USATF NYC Grand Prix meeting for example, was scheduled at 9am, and Annette says “it rained all day on Friday, then into the competition on Saturday morning until ten minutes after we were finished. Then it stopped and the sun came out. But it was no problem. I’m used to throwing in the rain in Cincinnati.”

And she’d heard in the days before the meet that the ring at Icahn Stadium was “not the most even surface, so the rain probably balanced it out in our favor.”

Annette ended up being the only hammer thrower among the men and women who made it through six rounds without fouling, and she won with a series (69.70m, 68.36m, 69.15m, 68.72m, 70.69m, 71.11m) that showed remarkable consistency. 

But, as in most of her comps this year, Annette was frustrated by her inability to hit a big throw. 

Her season’s best remains the 75.00m she tossed at the USATF Throws Festival in May, and in June she knocked out her best throw ever in Europe–73.66m at the Irena Szewinska Memorial meeting in Poland. “But,” says Annette, “I’m stronger this year, so there is more to come out in terms of distance. My goal is still to distinguish myself as one of the world’s best hammer throwers.”

She might have taken an important step in that direction in New York. It was the first time this season that Annette’s longtime coach, Susan Seaton, was able to see her throw in person, and afterwards she told Annette that she knew “exactly what we have to do going forward.”

According to Annette, one key to unlocking some big throws might be to give herself more grace when struggling at practice.

She says a “tiny part of the reason I haven’t thrown as far as I could this season is because I’m so self-critical. In just about every throw, I’m very aware of what’s going on with my technique, and I’m always telling myself I’ve got to do better.”

To encourage Annette to be a little more patient with herself, Coach Seaton shared an interview Ryan Crouser gave after breaking his own World Record at the recent LA Grand Prix. In it, Ryan reflects on a difficult period he went through in 2018, and explains how he climbed out of a technical rut by focusing not on the many things he thought he was doing wrong but on one simple thing each session that he was doing right.

Annette says that since watching the video, she has done her best to “believe in practice and not be so self-critical in practice, and to encourage myself in practice rather than just trying to be positive in meets.”

Bottom line, “we have to remember to applaud ourselves when we do something right.”

Her next competition will be on July 9th at the 2023 USATF Championships when she will take on a stellar field that will include 2022 World champion Brooke Andersen, 2022 World bronze medalist Janee’ Kassanavoid, 2019 World champion DeAnna Price, former NCAA champ Maggie Ewen who set a new PB of 75.10m in May, and first-year pro Alyssa Wilson who has a PB of 74.78m. 

As defending champ, Brooke has a bye for Budapest so Annette’s job will be to finish ahead of at least one of the other contenders from the above group, although she reminded me that someone unexpected might make a run for the podium as well. 

“Anything can happen,” she cautioned. “There are the marks on paper, and then there is what is actually going to happen in the competition. Look at me last year. I don’t think a lot of people even knew I was trying to switch my allegiance, so when I showed up at USAs, people were probably like, ‘What the heck is happening?’”

However things turn out in Eugene, Annette will stay positive going forward.

“I know my future is bright” she says. “I’m here for a reason, and I’ll keep working hard until God says ‘Do something else!’”

Badgers have fun in the California sun

Whenever I’m at a museum that has a collection of Ancient Greek vases, I like to play a version of Where’s Waldo where I look for images of people chucking the jav or discus. It validates me and makes me feel less weird to see that the folks who invented philosophy and theater and gyros loved the sport of throwing as much as I do. 

One thing I’ve noticed about the athletes depicted on the vases, though, is that they are never wearing three layers of sweats or thick woolen gloves. Nor do they appear to be freezing their asses off. 

That’s not how it goes for modern throwers, at least not those living and training in the American Midwest where typical spring weather makes frostbite a real possibility.

Luckily, the US has its own version of the Mediterranean climate in a place called California. There, throwers can compete in comfort and snack on avocado toast as did Coach Dave Astrauskas’ group from the University of Wisconsin earlier this month.

The result? Fourteen PBs and two school records. Here’s some deets.

A pack of Badgers is called a “clan” or a “cete.”

Cal State LA Twilight Invitational  April 12

Chloe Lindeman  won the hammer at the LA Twilight Invitational with a PB toss of 64.52m. It was the beginning of a  successful week made possible, according to Coach Astrauskas, by a conversation he had with Chloe a few months ago that went something like this:

Astrauskas: 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! 

Astrauskas: We all think we are a certain thing until we are not.

It’s hard to argue with logic like that, and Chloe’s performance since ditching the shot–a fourth-place finish in the weight at the NCAA Indoor Championships, a cavalcade of hammer PBs this spring–has been promising. 

Olivia Roberts, also coming off a successful winter with the weight (13th at NCAA Indoors), took second in the hammer here with a best of 57.30m. Olivia is a reformed jumpaholic who came to Madison as a potential multi then briefly tried the javelin before taking up the ball and wire full time in 2021.

Her introduction to the hammer involved several months of throwing light implements into a net. As fun as that sounds, Astrauskas was impressed with Roberts’ stick-to-it-iveness. 

“At times, she was like, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be good at this,’” Astruaskas recalls. “But she was always fun to work with, always asked good questions. And she showed up every day with a smile on her face ready to try something that was completely foreign to her–throwing into a tarp and lifting a lot of weights.”

Roberts threw 54.84m that first season, then improved to 60.61m in 2022. 

Coach A says that her performance in the weight (22.32m PB) shows that she has the “horsepower” to make the hammer go. After this year, she’ll have two indoor seasons and one outdoor season of eligibility remaining, and Astrauskas is excited to see how much more she can improve.

Sam Coil won the Twilight  men’s hammer comp with a 67.00m PB. Sam, a grad student who transferred from South Dakota State in 2021, came to Madison as a three-turn hammer thrower and struggled as he transitioned to four turns. After throwing 61.35m during the 2021 season, he topped out at 61.20m last year. 

Just before the California trip, however, Sam experienced what Coach Asttrauskas describes as a “lightbulb moment.”  

That conversation went something like this

Sam: Coach, I don’t need to try so hard on my throws. I can kind of let the ball pull me through my first three turns.

Astrauskas: Yep.

Sam’s practice attempts improved immediately, and a five-and-a-half meter PB at the Twilight followed.

Chloe Lindeman, Coach Astrauskas, and Josie Schaefer celebrating big throws with big smiles.

Pacific Coast Intercollegiate Invitational April 13

Lindeman threw 62.88m at the Pacific Coach Intercollegiate to pick up another win. This was the third consecutive comp where she surpassed her PB from last season (62.66m), and Coach Astrauskas says  bigger throws will come as Chloe stops relying so much on the “ballistic finish” that helped her launch the weight 23.77m this winter. 

Josie Schaefer, entering the final leg of a magnificent Badger career, tossed her best-ever outdoor season opener (18.18m) to win the women’s shot. Astrauskas says that besides scoring tons of points, Josie–second at the 2021 NCAA Outdoor Championships and again at the 2023 Indoor Champs–serves as the “master motivator and leader of the team.”

Josie herself is highly motivated to improve her discus PB (57.22m) during her final season, but she came up a little short here, finishing sixth with a throw of 55.04m. The conditions, according to Astruaskas, were favorable, and Schaefer hit solid positions during her throws, but the discus gods are fickle and a slight glitch in her release cost her some distance.

Jason Swarens put the shot 19.11m to take the win. Swarens (6’4”, 300lbs) is a big man with a big future, according to Astrauskas. “He threw 64’ with a glide as a junior in high school,” says Coach A. “So, he has some pop. He also has two more years of eligibility, and with his passion for the event, he can be one of the best we’ve ever had here.”

Another contender for best-ever Badger is Andrew Stone, who finished third in the men’s shot with a throw of 18.36m, well below the PB of 19.97m he produced in May of 2022. 

Andrew’s struggles this season can be traced back to a biceps tendon strain he suffered in his left arm indoors. Astrauskas says Stone was in a lot of pain at the Big Ten Indoor Championships, but with the Badgers in the hunt for the title, insisted on going for broke on his final attempt. Stone produced his best put of the day (18.63m) and picked up important team points by jumping from seventh to fourth place. 

“Putting that kind of effort out there might have set him back with the injury,” says Astrauskas. “But he told me recently that he felt like it was worth it to help the team. He is a tough son of a gun.” 

In spite of some lingering discomfort, Stone produced a 55.04m PB in the disc at the PCI, which moved him to number ten all time for the Badgers.

They say fish is brainfood, so look for this group to do well on their final exams.

Beach Invitational April 14 – April 15

Chloe Lindeman hammered a PB of 64.90m to take second at the Beach Invitational. Astrauskas described that throw as “the most fluid in her first three turns. There was no big gap between turns three and four, and she didn’t pause to load up before her delivery. We don’t want to take away her violent finish, but we don’t want that to be the sole focus.” 

Chloie was, he added, “pretty excited” after that throw, and understandably so. With it, she broke the school record.

There was more excitement for Astrauskas’ crew in the women’s hammer as Olivia Roberts climbed to number four on the all time list with a 61.44m toss that has the Badgers looking solid in that event.

There are no brats here, and we’re okay with that. Olivia Roberts and Chikere Oduocha enjoying Cali.

Sam Coil’s light bulb continued to burn bright at the Beach as he backed up his recent PB with another fine effort, this time 65.89m to finish tenth. After learning to stay more relaxed through his turns, Astrauskas says Sam now has to adapt as the implement moves faster.

“He had so much ball speed, it pulled him off the ground,” observed the coach. “When you make a change and it works, you then sometimes have to adjust to the fact that you are creating greater force. But that’s a good problem to have.”

Jason Swarens made a huge statement at the Beach with a 19.86m blast to take the win. Keep in mind, this young man’s outdoor SB in 2022 was 18.74m.  

“His technique is just starting to get better,” Astrauskas explained. “Covid wiped out his senior season in high school, then when he got to Madison I redshirted him, so he had two years of not competing. Now, he’s finally starting to see the results of all the hard work he put in.” 

Swarens is now number two all time at Wisconsin behind Stone, who was a DNS at the Beach in both the shot and disc as, unfortunately, his biceps issue resurfaced. 

“Andrew has one more outdoor and two indoor seasons after this,” says Astrauskas, “and I hope we can keep him healthy because he has the ability to do special things. Every year he’s been here, he’s had some kind of nagging injury, probably because of the way he’s built. He’s wound kind of tightly, which is fine for shot putting but he needs to learn to listen to his body more and to do the stuff outside of the ring that will make him more durable. If he can stay healthy, he has a great future.”

We can’t help it, palm trees make us happy! Abby Peeler and Danni Langseth hugging it out.

Mt. SAC Relays April 15

Chloe Lindeman launched another fine throw, 64.67m, to finish ninth in the Elite Invitational division at Mt. SAC. Her performance came in spite of some miscommunication that had her and Astrauskas thinking she would be throwing early in the day in the Collegiate division. 

“At first,” according to Astrauskas, “she was put in the Collegiate competition, then she got moved to the Elite section. Then, they moved her back to Collegiate, so we showed up at 9 a.m. on Saturday but found out she was moved again, and wouldn’t throw until 2 p.m.”

Lindeman remained untroubled by the fuss, and her consistency in the 64-meter range has Astrauskas excited about her future. As with Stone and Swarens, she’ll have one outdoor and two indoor seasons remaining after this year.

Josie Schaefer finished tenth in the Mt SAC Elite Women’s Disc, launching an SB of 56.70m in what Astrauskas describes as a “nice wind.” She fell short of her season’s goal of 200 feet (60.96m), but was likely tired after smashing the school record in the shot put that morning.

Josie’s shot PB had been stuck at 18.29m since the 2021 NCAA Outdoor Championships, but on this day Astrauskas could tell right away that something was brewing. 

“The first time she got in the ring during warmups,” he says, “the ball was going. I don’t think she was under 18 meters on any throw.”

 Once the comp began, she went 18.12m, 18.98m, 18.54m. 

Never wanting to pass up an opportunity to ice a thrower on the best day of their career, the officials took their time reordering the flight before the final three rounds, and once things finally got rolling again Schaeffer was understandably low on gas. Adding 69 centimeters to your PB can be quite a jolt to the system. Her final throws went 17.74m, foul, 17.11m.

What caused the breakthrough? 

Astruaskas attributes it to the work they’ve put in smoothing out Josie’s entry. “Our focus has been on out of the back, ” he explained. “Making sure to make a good job of coming around the left, staying out over the left, and keeping the right shoulder down. Today, she did that very well.”

The 18.98m throw vaulted Schaefer to fifth on the World Athletics performance list for 2023, and has inquiring minds wondering if she’ll turn pro after this season.

“Josie,” says Astrauskas,” is not one to hang on without good reason. She has certain distances in her mind, and if she hits them she’ll probably continue throwing. Otherwise she’ll call it a career.”

Whatever that number is, shot put fans can only hope she achieves it. Yes, the United States is currently flush with top female putters, but there’s room for a competitor who is, according to Astrauskas, “Fierce, focused and always ready to go at the big meets.”  

The next “big meet” for Josie and the Badgers will be this weekend’s Penn Relays where temperatures will be in the low ’60’s with lots of rain and no palm trees. Just like home.

Chloe Lindeman, Coach Astrauskas, and Olivia Roberts showing no signs of sun stroke.

Bears Golden at Mt. SAC

Looks like Mo Saatara’s Cal Berkeley throws squad–aka Mo’s Maulers, aka the Berkeley Bangers, aka…sorry, I’ll stop–is the real deal. After showing up huge at the Brutus Hamilton Invite on April 8th,  Mo’s group–the Cal Crushers?–performed prodigiously once again at last weekend’s Mt. SAC relays. Could this be a developing trend? Let’s examine.

Men’s Hammer–Collegiate Division

Kegan Schroeter won the Men's Hammer--College Division at Mt. SAC. Photo credit: Ron Sellers
Kegan Schroeter won the Collegiate Men’s Hammer at Mt. SAC. (Photo Credit: Ron Sellers)

Kegan Schroeter broke the 70-meter barrier for the first time to take the win. His series (66.71m, 69.20m, 69.03m, 70.21m, foul, foul) showed that Coach Saatara’s emphasis on developing consistent technique is paying off. 

Mo is not an advocate of the haul ass and hope for the best style of throwing. “It all comes down to stability,” he explained. “If you are steady and consistent, then one of your throws is eventually going to go.”

It’s a good sign when your old PB (in Kegan’s case 69.33m) becomes a routine throw. It’s also a good sign when you break a school record that has stood for thirty-seven years.

Keegan is going to have to work to keep his spot on top of the board though, as Mo’s hammer group includes another potential 70-meter man in  Ivar Moisander (69.05m PB), who finished fourth at Mt. SAC with a toss of 66.33m. 

Ivar Moisander took 4th in the Men’s Collegiate Hammer at Mt. SAC (Photo credit: Al Sermeno/KLC fotos)

Mo says that Ivar showed solid technique at Mt. SAC, but lacked some of his usual explosiveness due to a recent illness. He predicts though, that Ivar will be ready for the championship season (PAC-12s, regionals, NCAAs). According to Mo, Ivar “loves the big meets” and is a solid bet to hit 70 meters when it counts the most.

Michael Gupta is part of a solid men’s hammer trio at Cal. (Photo Credit: Catharyn Hayne)

A third Golden Bear hammer thrower, Michael Gupta (63.69m PB) also competed at Mt. SAC, finishing fifteenth. Mo credits Michael with contributing to the healthy chemistry that exists among the hammer folk at Cal. A computer science major, Michael “sets a great example of how to balance academics and athletics” and possesses a “deep understanding” of the event. Anyone looking for a solid theoretical conversation about hammer technique should, according to Mo, give Michael a call. 

Tempting!

Men’s Discus–Elite Invitational

Young Mykolas Alekna, is on track to become one of the best ever in his event. Mykolas, the 2022 World silver medalist and European champion, shook the Brutus with a 68.39m bomb, and then followed that up with a 68.35m toss at Mt. SAC to take the win.. 

Wunderkind alert! Mykolas Alekna won the Elite Men’s Discus at Mt. SAC. (Photo Credit: Shawn David Price)

The lanky Lithuanian looked solid in warmups but, according to Mo, began pressing a bit once the comp began. Hitting the cage on his “best technical throw” did not help matters, and Mykolas was never quite able to find his rhythm.

Lord knows what will happen once he does, but one NCAA opponent who will try to provide some competition is Arkansas’s Rojé Stona, a transfer from Clemson who broke the Razorback school record at Mt. SAC with a toss of 66.64m. 

Great Britain’s Lawrence Okoye finished third here, as he did the last time he faced Alekna–at the 2022 European Championships. 

Okoye–large, strong, explosive, large–is legendary for his physical gifts and inconsistency. During warmups, Mo told his kids to keep an eye on the bulging Brit as he is always capable of hitting a big throw. His series–foul, 66.15m, foul, 62.58m, foul, 59.00m–was a typical all-or-nothing outing for Okoye. Alekna, by way of comparison, backed up his 68.35m with three additional throws over 65 meters, and all of Stona’s five measured throws were between 64.41m and 66.64m.

Iffy Joyner finished 7th in the Elite Men’s Discus as Mt. SAC. (Photo credit: Catharyn Hayne /KLC Fotos )

Cal’s Iffy Joyner finished seventh with a best of 59.23m. As described in an earlier piece on the Brutus, Iffy has been plagued by a knuckle injury on his throwing hand, but Mo believes they have finally found a way to tape and pad the swollen joint that will allow him to throw normally. During the week leading up to Mt. SAC, Iffy was able to resume training with heavy discs (2.5-3.0 kilos), which was an integral part of his routine in the past. Mo says that Iffy “feels like he is getting back to where he needs to be,” which is perfect timing with PAC-12s less than a month away.

Women’s Hammer–Elite Invitational

Cal grad Camryn Rogers, now representing Canada as one of “Mo’s pros,” began her professional career at the Brutus by launching 77.30m to take the world lead. She extended that mark at Mt. SAC with a 77.84m opener.

Camryn Rogers showing there is more to Canadians than maple syrup and politeness. ((Photo Credit: Ron Sellers)

Mo appreciated the bomb, but was even happier with Rogers’ series (77.84m, 75.61m, 76.79m, 76.03m, 75.37m, 77.14m), which displayed the level of consistency he deems critical to anyone wanting to climb the podium at an international championships.

“If you look at the great champions,” he says, “they had stable technique that they could repeat. That allowed them to produce big throws multiple times in a competition. And with the level  they are at right now in the women’s hammer, you’ll very likely need to throw  79.00-80.00m to contend for a medal.”

Speaking of major championships, Camryn approached Mt. SAC as if it were the final at a Worlds or Olympics. 

After performing a general warmup away from the track, she sat down and chilled for an hour as athletes are forced to do when confined to a call room at the big comps. She then took only two warmup throws in the cage prior to her flight.

Mo says that the “environment at a championships is very different than at a normal comp. You have the call room and very limited warmups in the ring, and athletes need practice in dealing with that. If you get used to taking a bunch of warmup throws at all your other competitions, it can be a shock when you only get two at Worlds. You have to use each competition to develop the skills you’ll need to throw well at the big ones.”

Anna Purchase made a huge breakthrough at the Brutus, launching a 73.02m missile to take the NCAA lead by nearly three meters. You can probably guess Mo’s advice going into Mt. SAC. 

Anna Purchase sits atop the NCAA leader board in the women’s hammer. (Photo Credit: Don Gosney)

“Let’s pepper the 70-meter line this week,” he told her. “Keep building stability. There will be more peak throws coming if you can keep raising the level of your average throws.”

Mission accomplished. Anna took second at Mt. SAC with a series–69.25m, foul, 69.97m, foul, 69.29m, foul–which represented an improvement over her marks at the Brutus–66.57m, 73.02m, 68.15m, 68.80m, pass, pass–with the exception of the big blast. 

Mo and Anna will work to elevate her “average” even more with the hope that she can unleash another corker at the NCAA Championships in June.

Men’s Shot–Elite Invitational

Cal’s Jeff Duensing (19.39m PB, 18.91m SB) came to Mt. SAC looking to get some experience at a high-caliber meet. He threw 18.06m and finished twelfth, but Mo believes the trip was fully worthwhile. “This was his first big invite,” he explained. “Jeff has only done college meets before this, and he needed to get a taste of how you have to step up if you want to compete against the best.”

Jeff Duensing placed 12th in the Elite Men’s Shot Put at Mt. SAC. (Photo Credit: Al Sermeno)

The “best” in the men’s shot turned out to be Arizona’s Jordan Geist, who seems to be following the advice I would give to all college students–Don’t leave! 

Geist was the 2018 Pac-12 Freshman of the Year, has scored several jillion points for his Wildcats during the intervening years, and hopes to end his NCAA career with an outdoor shot put (and possibly hammer) title to match the indoor crown he won this March.

He grabbed the top spot here with an NCAA-leading toss of 21.25m, and Mo says Geist is in excellent form.

 “Jordan,” he surmised, “is learning to manage his speed across the circle. Camryn had to go through the same process in the hammer. She can turn really fast, but at one point I said to her ‘That’s nice, but nobody cares how fast you can move. They care how far the hammer goes.’ Jordan creates a tremendous amount of rotational power, and sometimes maybe he struggled to use it properly, but he’s figuring that out, which will make him very hard to beat.”

Women’s Discus–Elite Invitational

Cal volunteer assistant coach Elena Bruckner broke the 60-meter barrier for the first time at the Brutus, then surpassed it twice more at Mt. SAC, producing a series–57.29m, 60.79m, 57.24m, 61.51m, 59.87m, foul–that suggests bigger throws might be coming soon.

Elena Bruckner,, Camryn Rogers and Anna Purchase showing off their Mt. SAC hardware. (Photo courtesy of Elena Bruckner)

This is Bruckner’s second year as one of Mo’s pros, and the 60.26m she threw at the Brutus was her first discus PB since 2019. 

That’s a long time to persevere, and Mo gives Elena credit for enduring a painstaking technique renovation last year when she first began training in Berkeley. 

Mo says that even with an accomplished thrower, a coach must always start with the basics. “You don’t want to get complicated or get weird right away. If you try to change too much at once, none of it will happen. The first stage is to develop balance. The next stage is learning to carry the disc through the ring without losing your connection to it.”

Once they made progress on those fronts, Bruckner also needed to shore up her mechanics during the release phase. 

“She was,” Mo recalls, “just pivoting her knee into the throw, which doesn’t create force. You need to anchor your block and then move the hip (in Bruckner’s case her left hip–she’s a southpaw) around it. Then you generate force.”

 The methodical approach was not easy for Bruckner, who came out of high school in 2016 with a 55.67m PB and some big expectations. 

“She had a lot of pressure when she was younger,” Mo explained. “And that is not necessarily a good thing. If a kid is talented, they don’t need people hitting them on the head with it. They need guidance, someone to say, ‘If you want to accomplish these things, here is how you do it.’”

Bruckner improved to 57.40m during her time at the University of Texas, and after exhausting her NCAA eligibility sought a fresh start in Berkeley.

She showed a lot of moxie as she and Mo went through the often tedious process of drilling fundamentals in 2022. “It was not easy,” recalls Mo. “There was a lot of trial and error, a lot of work, and a lot of not knowing if we were on the correct path until we got it right.”

Bruckner’s best mark in 2022 was 55.79m, but she found a nice rhythm during fall practices and has been able to build on that this spring.

Her 61.51m at Mt. SAC was good enough for third behind two highly accomplished throwers, Oregon’s Jorinde Van Klinken and former Iowa Hawkeye Laulauga Tausaga-Collins

Those two will likely be competing at the Worlds in Belgrade this summer, and if Bruckner continues to climb, she just might join them.

In the meantime, don’t sleep on Mo’s Monsters! The Clubbers of Cal? The Berkeley Bashers? I’ll work on it.

A Super Day for Cal Throwers

I’m old enough to remember a time when really smart kids spent their weekends building robots or arguing about which is the coolest prime number. These days, they seem focused on establishing total dominance over the world of NCAA throwing. Last week, I detailed the exploits of Harvard’s huckers at the Florida Relays. Now, we turn our attentions to the brawny brainiacs of Cal Berkeley who dominated the recent Brutus Hamilton Invite held at their home stadium.

Men’s Hammer

Kegan Schroeter takes the win at the 2023 Brutus Hamilton Invite. Photo credit: Catharyn Hayne

Cal throws coach Mo Saatara described the Brutus Hamilton as “kind of a test meet,” and hammer thrower Kegan Schroeter set the curve early with a 67.86m toss for the win. Schroeter, a transfer from Brown whom Coach Saatara describes as a “big talent and a great guy,” came close to his 69.33m PB in spite of the fact that the hammer guys were still in “heavy training” in the weeks leading up to the meet.

Cal’s other 69-meter hammer dude, Ivar Moisander, sat this one out due to a bout with the flu. 

 Max McKhann of Stanford, took second behind Schroeter with a toss of 65.39m.

Women’s Hammer

Camryn Rogers, who won three NCAA titles for Cal, began her pro career at the Brutus with a world-leading throw of 77.30m. 

2022 World Championships silver medalist Camryn Rogers in her professional debut. Photo credit: Catharyn Hayne

After an incredibly successful 2022 season–NCAA title, NCAA record, World Championships silver–Camryn and Mo sat down to figure out what they could do to make 2023 even better. “We decided,” Mo says, “that she needed to make her technique more stable so she could easily replicate it. She also needed to start performing better in early rounds to take some of the pressure off during qualification at the major championships like Worlds.”  

Camryn’s series–77.00m, 76.04m, 77.30m, Pass, Pass, Pass–suggests that they are already making progress.

The three passes look odd on the stat sheet, but Mo explained that they were part of the plan going in. “We wanted to treat this like a qualification round, where you know you only have three throws to hit the standard or at least put yourself in the top twelve. Qualification rounds have caused her a lot of stress in the past, so If we can make her more confident in her ability to produce big throws early, it will be easier for her to feel comfortable going into a final.”

And as Mo sees it, Camryn will need all the comfort she can muster at the Worlds this summer in Belgrade, which he predicts will be “amazingly competitive,” in part because  Anita Wlodarczyk (3x Olympic, 4x European, and 4x World champ) and DeAnna Price (2019 World champ, second to Anita on the all time list) should be healthy after suffering derailment-by-injury last season.

The field will also include 2022 World Championship gold medalist  Brooke Andersen, who will receive a bye into the 2023 Worlds, and likely Janee’ Kassanavoid, the 2022 bronze medalist, provided she makes it through what promises to be an extremely competitive USA Trials in July.

With a lineup like that, Mo says he would not be surprised to see “multiple” throws over 80 meters in Belgrade.     

Cal’s Anna Purchase took second on Saturday with a huge 73.02m PB that might set her up to join Rogers in Belgrade. Purchase represents Great Britain internationally, and is already close to the 73.60m automatic qualifying mark for Worlds.

Anna Purchase takes the NCAA lead. Photo credit: Catharyn Hayne

Mo attributes Anna’s breakthrough to the hard work they’ve put in strengthening and standardizing her throwing form the past two years. “It’s critical to be stable in your technique,” he explained. “Then you can go into a big competition and just throw as you normally do and not try to make a superhuman effort.” 

Purchase’s series–66.57m, 73.02m, 68.15m, 68.80m, Pass, Pass–showed that she still has work to do regarding her consistency, but a PB of nearly two-and-a-half meters is an encouraging sign. 

Mo intended to limit Anna to three throws as he did with Rogers, but promised her she could take a fourth attempt if she “did great” early on. 

“I actually thought her fourth throw was her best technically,” he says. “But she was completely gassed from jumping around and celebrating the 73.02m.”

And who could blame her? That toss put her atop the NCAA leaderboard for 2023 and moved her to fifth place all-time in her event.

Men’s Shot

Jake Porter winning the shot. Photo credit: Catharyn Hayne

Cal’s Jake Porter rolled his ankle earlier this spring, but relied on what Mo describes as his “blue collar” work ethic to get back into fighting trim. His best of 17.64m got him first at the Brutus over the “two Niks,” or possibly the “two Nicks.” That would be Nik Iwankiw, and Nick Godbehere, two talented redshirt freshmen for whom Mo has high hopes. 

His best putter, Jeff Duensing (19.39m PB) did not compete due to a case of food poisoning he picked up the previous weekend after finishing seventh at the Texas Relays.

Men’s Discus

However lousy Duensing felt after dining at the Austin Airport, the top men’s discus throwers in the world had to feel worse upon hearing that Mykolas Alekna opened his season with 68.39m– the second best throw in NCAA history. 

2022 European Champion and World Championships silver medalist Mykolas Alekna picking up right where he left off. Photo credit: Catharyn Hayne

Alekna, the World silver medalist and European Champion, started with a foul and told Mo that throwing in the ring where he practices every day made him forget for a minute that he was supposed to save these throws. His series also included a 67.89m effort and two more fouls, one of which landed beyond 70 meters. 

What’s the deal with this kid? 

Mykolas is, according to Mo, very engaged in the process. “People don’t realize how much of his technique is his technique,” he explained. “Mykolas is the driver there. He understands what he is trying to do and why. People think that because the dad (two-time World and Olympic champ Virgilijus Alekna) threw far, of course the son throws far, but if you want to be as good as Mykolas has been, you have to be committed, and he is.”

When the two sat down to decide how they might build on last season, one thing they decided to focus on was improving Mykolas’s finish–specifically, the double support phase of his delivery. 

Mo acknowledges that one of Mykolas’s strengths is the way he “catches the disc very early,” but believes they can find “more meters” if Mykolas can accelerate the disc better through the finish rather than just “slapping at it.”

In terms of physical qualities, Mo describes Mykolas as “extremely flexible” with a power output that is “crazy.” 

“I would compare him to Koji Murofushi. He is just very explosive, very good at throwing things. Because of his dad, people think Mykolas must be 6’9” or something, but he is more like 6’5”. He has long levers, but all the top discus throwers have long levers. What makes Mykolas special is that he feels and understands the movement very well, and can move things explosively.”   

When Mykolas asked Mo to recommend someone he might benefit from watching on video, Mo suggested Ryan Crouser, “because he is always under control, always balanced, always disciplined, never jumping out the front to throw far.” 

With another World Championships coming up in August, one challenge for Mo, Mykolas, and Mykolas’s Lithuanian coach Mantas Jusis, is to keep him healthy through both the collegiate and international seasons.  

Mo says that with an athlete as explosive as Mykolas, a coach has to be careful not to get “too crazy” during training. “You can’t go to the well too much,” he explained. “It’s better to be more conservative with volume and load so the athlete can keep training and getting better instead of missing time with an injury. Discus throwing is a highly skilled task, and the more time you can spend on it the better you’ll be.”

Iffy Joyner (62.17m PB) can attest to the truth of that statement. Since last season, Iffy has been struggling with arthritis in the middle finger of his throwing hand, which hurts, according to Mo, “in just the wrong spot.” 

Iffy finished seventh at the Texas Relays with a toss of 58.48m, and took second at the Brutus with 58.69m. The finger has forced him to give up shot putting, but Mo is optimistic that it won’t be too much of a detriment in the disc. They have a doctor’s note which allows Iffy to pad and tape the knuckle during competitions, and things are going well enough that Mo has encouraged Iffy to continue competing when his eligibility expires this spring. 

Women’s Discus

That is exactly what Elena Bruckner, currently a volunteer assistant at Cal, did when she graduated from Texas two years ago. Elena was not ready to give up throwing, so she moved back to her native California and began training at Cal. This weekend, she surpassed the coveted sixty-meter barrier, tossing 60.26m to take the win. 

Mo actually recruited Elena out of high school, and describes her talent level as “insane.” 

She is also, in Mo’s words, a “genuinely nice” person whose superpower is her rare combination of elasticity and explosiveness. 

Mine is knowing when to end a post. More to come after the busy weekend ahead!

Big throws at the 2023 Texas Relays!

As another weekend of NCAA competition heats up, here’s a quick look back at last week’s Texas Relays.

Hammer time

Pat Ebel’s Auburn throws squad had a great weekend.

Maddie Malone got the Tigers rolling on Thursday with a win in the women’s hammer. Her best of 68.45m topped Canadian Kaila Butler of the Kamloops Track and Field Club, whose top effort of 67.75m came on her final attempt.

Ebel says that Maddie’s training is going “really well. She competed in the weight at indoor nationals in early March, so we held her out of a couple of outdoor meets earlier this season just so she could get her rhythm back in the hammer. But she’s starting to find her feel.”

Malone opened her outdoor campaign with a toss of 68.79m at the FSU Relays on March 23. She set her PB of 69.66m in April of 2022, a mark that Ebel believes she will soon surpass. “We have been training hard in the weight room,” he explained. ”And we are also working on a couple of technical points, but I can see her going seventy meters soon.”

The women’s hammer comp was contested in a steady rain, which Ebel says did not hinder Maddie’s performance. “She’s thrown in that weather before. And I always tell my throwers, that as long as you are technically sound coming out of the back on your entry, rain shouldn’t bother you at all.”

Maddie’s 68.79m has her ranked second in the NCAA at this point, and when she returns to Austin for the NCAA Championships in June, she will try to improve on her eighth-place finish from 2022 

That will be it for her college eligibility, but she plans to stick around Auburn to train with Ebel while pursuing a pro career, a bold choice considering the current American dominance in the event.  Brooke Andersen and Janee’ Kassanavoid are currently ranked first and second in the world, with Annette Echikunwoke eleventh and Alyssa Wilson twentieth–and that list does not include Maggie Ewen (75.04m PB), who has focused on the shot put of late but plans to contest the hammer seriously again starting this season. And don’t forget about DeAnna Price, the 2019 World Champion who demonstrated she is once again in top form by breaking the World Record in the weight in February.

But Ebel looks forward to the challenge. “I’ve got a couple of post-collegiate javelin throwers training here as well,” he explained. “So it will be a nice environment for Maggie. And she’s got a lot left in the tank!”

The men’s hammer comp in Austin was won by Ethan Katzburg, teammate of Kaila Butler on the Kamloops squad. Ethan broke the meet record with a 77.12m bomb, and according to UCLA throws coach Sean Denard, “hasn’t even touched his potential.” Interestingly, Katzburg and the other Canadian hammer throwers are coached by Dylan Armstrong, a World and Olympic medalist in the shot who Denard says was a fine hammer thrower himself in his youth.

Ebel was proud of the performance turned in by his son, Erik, who wound up eleventh in a field loaded with post-collegiates. Besides Katzburg, the men’s hammer comp featured Diego Del Real, the fourth-place finisher at the 2016 Olympics, Erich Sullins (72.10m PB), Jose Padilla (73.36m PB), and Kieran McKeag (71.50m PB).

Erik’s teammates  Kyle Brown and Kyle Moison finished twelfth and fifteenth respectively,  and the elder Ebel believes all of his guys can get over seventy meters this year, in part because of the way they “push each other in practice.”

What is it like for Pat Ebel to coach his son?  

“It’s fun! We get to travel together, and he keeps me on my toes. When he was throwing in high school, I’d usually see him in only one or two meets a month, so we’re making up for some lost time now.”

Soak it all in

A compelling reason to make the trip to meets like the Texas Relays is that it gives college throwers a chance to be around some of the world’s best. The women’s disc, for example, featured Olympic champion Valarie Allman, who won with a meet record of 67.90m.

Ebel’s thrower Maura Huwalt threw 54.24m, which did not get her into the top nine, but Ebel encouraged her to stick around for the entire comp to observe Val. “I told Maura to just sit and watch and notice Val’s habits, her ability to focus and refocus. Learn from her, then use it when it’s your turn.”

Ebel believes Maura’s turn will come soon enough. 

She is nearly six feet tall, with “long arms” and a serious competitive streak. “Maura has taken full advantage of her time here at Auburn,” he says. “She’s one of those athletes where I have to tell her, “That’s enough for today. It’s time to go home!’”

Though there were no Olympic champions in the men’s discus, the field was fierce. ASU’s Turner Washington, the 2021 NCAA shot and disc champ won with a best of 64.01m. Behind him were BYU’s Dallin Shurts (second in the 2022 USATF Championships), LSU’s Claudio Romero (last year’s NCAA champ), Northwestern State’s Djimon Gumbs (who threw a PB of 61.21m in Austin), then Sam Welsh of Rice (a 63.26m thrower last year for Harvard), and Coach Denard’s guy Aidan Elbettar, who threw a meter-and-a-half PB of 59.91m to take fifth.

That was a big breakthrough for Aidan, who had struggled in the past against top competition. “Last year,” says Denard, “he caged all three of his attempts throwing against Mykolas Alekna at the conference meet and again at the regionals, so for him to throw well against Turner and Claudio and Dallin is a big deal.”

The difference this time?  “He was attacking. Aidan only had one fair throw, but it wasn’t because he was throwing scared. His fouls were good fouls. He was being aggressive.”

The conditions in Austin were championship level as well, according to Denard. “They can move the discus cage,” he explained, “so they were able to face it into an eight-to-twelve mile an hour wind. Plus it was 85 degrees, and there were lots of people there, so the energy level in the stadium was high.”

While in Austin, Denard’s athletes also got the chance to practice a bit with shot put world record holder Ryan Crouser, who was in town to serve as Honorary Referee. That session, Aidan’s breakthrough, and the presence of a chicken-shaped disco ball at a local restaurant made for a memorable weekend.

An auspicious start

The performance of the weekend came in the men’s jav when Auburn freshman Keyshawn Strachan went 84.27m on the second throw of his college career. It was a PB, a school record, a world lead, and the fourth best throw in NCAA history.

“That,” in the words of Pat Ebel, “was unexpected. Based on his training numbers and his practice PR of around 79.80m, I was hoping to see him open around 78-80 meters. Then he fouled his first attempt, which went about 82 meters, so I told him to move his runup back around half a jav length, and…”

Denard was not surprised. “I’ve seen Keyshawn throw before,” he said, “and he’s incredibly talented. To me, he’s the Michael Jordan of javelin throwing. When he hits the point, it goes.”

Ebel says that Keyshawn is “capable of throwing over 80 meters any time he steps on the runway,” and that he benefited from the atmosphere in Austin. “He was excited to throw in front of this crowd and to compete against guys like Curtis Thompson (87.70m PB). And, his mom, grandmother, and coach from the Bahamas all made it in to see him throw, so it was a special moment.”

The next step for Strachan?  Consistency. 

“His throw after the 84.27m went about 74 meters,” according to Ebel. “He blew through every position and fouled it by about ten feet. So our goal will be to get him regularly in the 80-meter range.”

Keyshawn’s bomb overshadowed a great performance by Chinecherem Nnamdi of Baylor, the bronze medalist at the 2021 World U20 Championships, and a nice 79.29m opener for Thompson. With two more collegiate throwers–LSU’s Tzuriel Pedigo and BYU’s Cameron Bates–over the 75-meter mark, and Virginia’s  Ethan Dabbs (the 2022 USATF champion) just under it, expect some fireworks this June when these fellows tee it up again on the same runway.

Like Coach Denard, I’m a lifelong Chicago Bulls fan, so I know who I’m picking.

The Force Awakens: Harvard Throwers Shine at the 2023 Florida Relays

Don’t underestimate the Force

A long time ago…last weekend, actually…in a galaxy far, far away…well, Florida…Coach Darcy Wilson’s intrepid group of Harvard throwers sent a tremor through the NCAA track and field world. By the time the 2023 Pepsi Florida Relays ended, it was clear that a New Order, one in which STEM majors throw far, had emerged.

Hammer specialist Stephanie Ratcliffe (neuroscience) started it all off on Friday morning with a round-three PB of 70.15m to take the win in her event. That toss–currently the leading mark in the NCAA– was her first beyond 70-meters and a massive improvement over her 2022 marks.  Coach Wilson says they “knew she would be chasing those types of numbers this year based on her practice throws. And she hit 66-meters at home in Australia in January, so she’s been climbing.”

Ratcliffe’s teammates Cammy Garabian (math) and Cara Salsbury (undeclared) finished eighth and eleventh respectively.  

Estel Valeanu (engineering) then took sixth in a discus comp won by Vandy’s Veronica Fraley. Wilson expects big things from Valeanu this season. Her 54.74m toss in Gainesville was not far off her PB of 56.07m, which is encouraging since she just finished her senior thesis–a strenuous undertaking that consumed much of her energy this spring. “Big things are on the horizon for her,” according to Wilson.  

Not to be outdone by Ratcliffe, hammer thrower Kenneth Ikeji (undeclared) breached the 70-meter barrier for the first time as well (72.48m) while finishing second to Miami’s Decio Andrade. Wilson admits to casting aspersions after Kenneth’s fourth-round toss of 69.99m, telling him, “You can’t let Stephanie get to 70 and you not!” That well-intentioned taunting, along with the many hours Kenneth spent this past year learning to be “patient on his entry” produced a nice PB which has him sitting fifth on this year’s NCAA list

Saturday was shot put day in Gainesville, and Sarah Omoregie (applied mathematics) proved that it does indeed only take one. Her series:  foul, 15.49m, 17.21m, foul, 15.64m, 16.10m. According to Wilson, Omoregie–a glider and former heptathlete–is “extremely athletic and wired with fast twitch muscles,” but has to “be patient in the middle and delay the shot” in order to make her best throws. She did that once on Saturday, and the result was a PB, with, Wilson says, more to come for “one of the best athletes I’ve ever trained.” That 17.21m captured second place for Omoregie behind freshman sensation Alida Van Daalen of Florida who reached 17.94m.

Alexander Kolesnikoff (economics) closed out the  weekend for the Harvard heavers by blasting a PB 20.05m on his sixth and final attempt to win the men’s shot, an achievement that “stunned him,” according to Wilson.  “He has been dreaming about this twenty-meter day for years, and the way it played out is exactly what we’ve been working on–open well and then continue to build.”  His series: 19.66m, 19.11m, 19.64m, 19.79m, foul, 20.05m.

Wilson loved the way her guy responded after South Carolina’s Dylan Taggart hit 19.80m in round six to knock Kolesnikoff temporarily out of the top spot. “He’s been working on how to compete,” she explained. “Alexander has been in some international comps, but not a lot of high-level NCAA meets, so this was a great experience for him. After Dylan hit that throw, I looked at Alexander and said, ‘Here is your opportunity. Use this!’” 

Wilson predicts that Kolesnikoff will have plenty more clashes against world class competitors. “Alexander is only the third Ivy Leaguer in history to throw over twenty meters,” she noted. “The other two are Augie Wolf and Stephen Mozia, who both made the Olympics. I can for sure picture Alex following in those footsteps.”

What makes Kolesnikoff such a good putter? “He is,” according to Wilson, “a huge human being and an extremely hard worker.” 

From left to right: Coach Darcy Wilson, Estel Valeanu, Cara Salsberry, Kenneth Ikeji, Alexander Kolesnikoff, Stephanie Ratcliffe, Sarah Omoregie, Cammy Garabian. Photo courtesy of Coach Wilson

Smaller in number are we, but larger in mind

According to the College Board website, Harvard accepts only four percent of applicants. Those who gain admittance tend to have an ACT score in the 34-36 range, and a GPA of at least 3.75 on a 4-point scale. 

That’s a small slice of the population from which to recruit folks with elite athletic potential. I asked Wilson how she does it.

“My pitch is that we are the best school in the country, so you can be number one academically and we can also take you as far as you want to go athletically. You don’t have to compromise in either area.”

One helpful factor is Harvard’s financial aid policy, which is the same for American  and international students. Harvard evaluates a family’s financial situation and meets one hundred percent of their “demonstrated financial need.” 

This makes Harvard more affordable and attracts younglings from across the globe who are blessed with brains that twitch as fast as their muscles. Kolesnikoff and Ratcliffe, for example, are Australian. Valeanu is from Israel.

Wilson says she “works a lot of American and international connections.” She had her eye on Ikeji, for example, and followed him via social media as he developed into Great Britain’s best young hammer thrower. “I loved his potential,” she recalls. “He was a city kid who had to get on a bus for an hour to go practice, so I knew he was committed to the sport. He also happens to be a brilliant human being.”

Once on campus, Harvard athletes face the daunting task of competing at a high level without cutting corners in the classroom. “The Ivy League has a stricter policy on travel and missed classes,” Wilson says. “So it takes a lot of planning and deciding which meets each athlete should attend. Luckily, the whole school is very supportive of these kids.”

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose

Among the group Wilson took to the Florida Relays, several will be competing for other schools next season. Valeanu will be an LSU Tiger in 2024, Kolesnikoff a Georgia Bulldog. Ratcliffe, Garabian, and Omoregie are currently in the transfer portal looking for the right fit.

This exodus is the result of a strange combination of circumstances. The Ivy League does not allow grad students to compete in athletics, and the five athletes mentioned above will all be grad students next year. The reason they still have athletic eligibility is because the NCAA gave everyone an extra year after the 2020 season was shut down. In fact, Kolesnikoff, Omoregie, and Valeanu have two years of eligibility remaining because the Ivy League did not allow athletes to compete in 2021 either. Ratcliffe actually has three years because she took a leave from the Harvard team and competed in Australia during 2022. 

Saying goodbye to this crew will not be easy for Wilson, but she has done her best to help Kolesnikoff and the others find their ideal landing spot. In the meantime, she looks forward to what promises to be an epic season for Harvard throws.

Coach Paolo Dal Soglio to Present at the 2022 European Shot Put Conference

I always remembered Paolo Dal Soglio as the guy who crashed the party in the men’s shot put at the 1996 Olympic Games. When I turned on my television that July evening, I was expecting to see an epic battle between European gliders and American spinners, but was greeted instead by the sight of Paolo (an Italian spinner!) having the time of his life. He held the lead until round five, and though he ended up missing the podium by a centimeter, he stole the show with his high-pitched screams and unabashed joy at performing on the big stage.

Paulo, in his athletic prime.

Fast forward to the summer of 2021, and I found myself greatly entertained by the sight of another Italian spinner having the time of his life at an Olympic Games. At first, I thought there’d been a mix up and the officials had accidentally put a decathlete in the men’s shot final there in Tokyo, but it turned out that this guy Zane Weir could really throw! He ended up launching a PB of 21.41m to take fifth, and has since raised that PB to 21.99m.

Zane Weir, an inspiration for skinny people everywhere.

It also turns out that Paolo is Zane’s coach, and they will present together at the upcoming 2022 European Shot Put Conference to be held October 28th-30th in Tallinn, Estonia.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Paolo recently as we taped an episode of the Throw Big Throw Far Podcast hosted by my friend Joe Frontier, and I was impressed with his thoughtful approach to coaching the rotational shot.

Like most putters from his era, Paolo started out as a glider. His coach for his entire career was a man named Aldo Pedron, and at some point Paolo and Aldo sought advice from the German coach Peter Tschiene, who suggested trying the rotational technique.

“We trained one month with the spin,” Paolo recalls, “and Peter said if I throw within 50 centimeters of my glide PB, we would change.”

He did, and they did.

This was 1991, in the Dark Ages before YouTube, and there was not a lot of information available on how to make the glide-to-spin conversion, so Aldo, Peter, and Paolo set about finding their own way.

Paolo says that they tried many options and experimented with different approaches to each phase of the throw, including his setup at the back. “We tried starting with a very deep bend in the knees,” he says, “and also standing straight up. The hardest thing was changing where I held the shot on my neck. That took a long time to get right.”

A big breakthrough came one day when Paolo was training in a cramped indoor space and launching many throws out of the sector. Those throws were “destroying things,” so Peter suggested that Paolo move to his right on his setup.

Immediately, that adjustment felt “amazing.”

“I felt like I had a bigger circle,” he recalls. “I could get my lower body ahead and build torsion.”

Along with Zane, Paolo also coaches Leonardo Fabbri (21.99m PB) and both those gents use the offset setup. That does not mean, however, that Paolo tries to make them copy his technique, as many people assumed he would when he began coaching.

“People were worried. They said, ‘Paolo has a big kick. Not good!'”

But Paolo believes that each athlete has to find their own way to make the shot go far. One key, he says, is creating torsion.

“You have two different engines,” he explains, “the upper body and the lower body. They work separately for most of the throw then at the end together.”

He also emphasized the need for trust between an athlete and coach, and the importance of determination, especially once an athlete reaches a level where improvement comes slowly.

“When you start out,” he says, “every day is like Christmas. But after that, are you willing to work keep working? Are you able mentally to train one year for a little bit of improvement?”

At the upcoming conference, Paolo and Zane will demonstrate the approach they used to help Zane improve from an anonymous skinny dude with a 19.09m PB into one of the world’s top putters.

World champion Chase Ealey and her coach, Paul Wilson will also present, as will Paulo Reis, coach of Auriol Dongmo.

It should be a fantastic weekend! You’ll find registration info here.