London Predictions: Women’s disc

Could anyone blame Sandra Perkovic for being distracted or just plain tired?  Traveling all over the  world doling out ass-beatings for years on end has got to take something out of you.

And I’m not being facetious.

I interviewed Valerie Adams a few years ago when she was near the end of a fifty-meet undefeated streak, and though clearly determined to maintain her domination, she also seemed worn down by the effort it took to stay on top for that long.

Same for Robert Harting when I spoke with him in the summer of 2014, while everything was still going his way. He was three-time World Champion. Defending Olympic Champion. The next day, at the New York stop on the Diamond League circuit, he smashed a 68-meter throw on a humid morning with the smell of garbage in the air. (Apparently, Icahn Stadium was built over a landfill.)

Robert was at the height of his uber mensch phase, capable of willing the disc 68 meters whenever he wanted, and yet…talking to him you could tell that like Val, he was weary of the  grind and looking ahead to retirement.

So when I started seeing photos like this…

…posted by Sandra on Instagram early this year, I began to wonder if maybe she was a little bored with the incessant training and travel, with maintaining the laser focus necessary to win two Olympic and one World Championships gold.

She had always been in great shape, but in the pictures she posted this summer she seemed to be noticeably thinner than in the past.

Could it be that looking glamorous had become more important to her than winning medals?

Uh….no.

Two weeks ago, she hammered a PR of 71.41m, thus serving notice on any knuckleheads out there who might have doubted her that they were mistaken.

Yes, Sandra, that sound you hear is me munching on crow.

A quick digression. I fear that my remarks on Sandra may come across as  sexist. What, can’t a woman look good in an evening gown and still throw 70 meters?

But another fine thrower, the American shot putter Jordan Clarke…

…also had me wondering this winter when he frequently posted images of himself powering through high volume, cardiac-heavy workouts–not the kind of training one would  indulge in if one’s main goal in life was to make a sixteen-pound ball go far.

The  slimmer Clarke became from those workouts, the more I wondered about his intentions for the upcoming season. And, as it turns out, he did retire from the sport.

Anyway, I just want everyone to know that I’m an equal opportunity doubter.

And Jordan, I know that it has always been your dream to appear in an article about female discus throwers. so…you’re welcome.

That said, if Sandra Perkovic is indeed in top form, does anyone have a chance of beating her in London?

How about Cuba’s Jaime Perez?

Built like a long jumper, she is an ardent practitioner of the “haul ass and knock the crap out of it” approach to discus throwing.  And she has had a sensational year, hitting a PR of 69.19m and beating Sandra head-to-head on more than one occasion.

How about Australia’s Dani Stevens (formerly Dani Samuels)?

After winning the 2009  Worlds in Berlin as a nine-year-old (that’s what it seemed like, anyway) her best finish in an Olympics or Worlds since is fourth in Rio.

But she threw 66.78m as recently as March, and she has tons of big meet experience.

How about Melina Robert-Michon of France?

Her tenth-place finish at the Beijing Worlds in 2015 prompted me to leave her out of my Olympic preview last year. She responded to that slight by belting a PR 66.73m in Rio to nab silver.

Her best throw so far this year is 63.63m, good for 14th on the world list. At the age of 38, she might be over the hill but she also might be lying low in an effort to make me look ridiculous again.

How about Gia Lewis-Smallwood of the United States?

She is the same age as Melina, but a very nasty back issue prevented her from even competing in Rio. It is something of a miracle that she is once again in fighting trim and currently ranked fourth in the world with a toss of 65.81m.

A throw like that wouldn’t win in London, but would likely get her on the podium.

The best of the German women this year is the veteran Nadine Muller.

A two-time World Championships medalist, her season best of 65.76m has her tied for fifth on the world list. As far as I can tell, she did not compete at the German championships this month, which made me wonder if she was injured, but she is on the team for London, and if healthy surely a threat to medal.

The best of the Chinese is Xinyue Su, currently ranked eleventh in the world with a season’s best of 64.08m.

She finished fifth in Rio.

Time for predictions.

Trofimuk

Gold: Perkovic

Reason: I quote: “She is the best there ever was and ever will be.”

Silver: Perez.

Bronze: Stevens.

McQ

Gold: Perkovic.

Reason: When Cuba’s Denia Caballero defeated Sandra in Beijing, she did so by dropping a 69-meter hammer on  her in round one.  At the time, Sandra was dinged up and 69 meters was beyond her range, so the competition was essentially over after one round. Perez would like nothing better than to follow her teammate’s example and kill one early, but Perk’s recent 71.41m suggests that she’s got the stuff to match anything Jaime can muster.

And, if it comes down to a battle of will, nothing against Perez, but…good luck.

Last year in Rio, Sandra showed her mettle when she walked into the ring for her third throw during the rain-soaked prelims sitting on two fouls. She threw 64.81m to advance.

The next morning, she opened the finals with…two fouls. A lesser person might have pooped the pants at such a moment. Sandra coolly drilled a 69.21m bullet that snagged her the gold.

A few years ago, I had the privilege of watching Sandra compete up close and personal at the New York Diamond League meeting. For some reason, the TV people wanted the discus out of the  way before the rest of the meet started, so I want to say warm-ups began at 9:30am.  Something like that. And it was fah-reeeezing out! Forty degrees with rain and a nasty wind. In late May. I like to have died.

Anyway, due to the early start and the conditions, I think Sandra’s coach Edis Elkasevic, my friend Peter Trofimuk (brother of Pat who helps me with these predictions) and I were about the only spectators in the stadium when the discus started, We stood where we could get the best view of the discus cage, and between every warm-up and competition throw Sandra came over to confer with Edis. I couldn’t understand what they were saying because they were not speaking English, but I could tell that in spite of the conditions, Sandra was jacked about competing that day.

She struggled on her first two or three attempts, and after one of them an official tried to block her from crossing the track to check in with Edis. Mind you, this was a couple of hours before the running events began, and the track was deserted, so I’m not sure what this guy was thinking, but no matter.  Sandra strode right past him, and when he protested she turned and said “You shut up, you!”

He did shut up, and a couple of throws later, Sandra got into that slick ring with a cold mist blowing sideways and knocked out a 68-meter throw to take over the world lead.

I wish I could say that the crowd roared in appreciation, but Edis, Peter, and I were too frozen to move our mouths.

Anyway, you get the idea.

Whatever happens in London, whatever Jaime or Mother Nature throw at her, Sandra will respond.

Silver: Perez.

Reason: She’s got more pop than anyone in the field aside from Perkovic. That will be enough to keep her ahead of a tightly packed group in which less than two meters separates those ranked numbers five thru thirteen in the world.

Bronze: Gia.

 Reason: Oh, why the hell not? If millions of Game of Thrones fans can convince themselves that there were dragons and people with perfect teeth running around during medieval times, why can’t I believe that a thirty-eight-year-old recovering from a serious back injury can conjure up  the performance of her life to win her first World Championship medal? I have one thing to say to those who doubt her. “You shut up, you!”

 

 

 

London Predictions: Men’s Discus

As with the men’s shot put, the men’s discus competition in London will feature a giant dude who has spent the summer dropping bombs.

That would be the big Swede, Daniel Stahl, who has four competitions over 68 meters this season including a 71.29m blast on June 29th at the Folksam Grand Prix meeting.

In London, Stahl will seek to exorcise memories of an awful performance in Rio where a best effort of 62.26m did not get him to the final (this, after finishing fifth at the  2015 Worlds in Beijing with a toss of 64.26m).

Oddly, Stahl’s main competition in London will come from three other athletes whose experiences in Rio were also at least semi-disastrous.

Frederick Dacres produced a groan-inducing best of 50.69m in Rio, but has looked fast, powerful, and confident on the Diamond League circuit this summer, hitting 68.36m in Stockholm, 67.10m in Oslo, and 66.66m in London.  Also, like Stahl, he performed well at the 2015 Worlds, finishing 7th with a toss of 64.22m and thus proving that he has the ability to make the final at a big meet in a big stadium.

Philip Milanov staked his claim as next great thrower on the horizon by taking silver at Beijing in 2015, then bit the weenie in Rio where he finished ninth. He has looked sharp this season with his best effort of 67.05m coming in Stockholm.

Robert Harting, arguably the best big meet thrower since Al Oerter, looked ready to  pull off a major comeback in Rio after blowing out his knee in the fall of 2014 and missing the entire 2015 campaign. He won the German championships in 2016 with a 68-meter effort, but suffered a back spasm the night before the Rio prelims while bending over to turn out a light. His best mark this year is 66.30m, but if the young bucks tighten up a bit and those Rio memories start to nag, can he be counted out?

Three of the top four finishers in Rio will not be competing in London. Neither gold medalist Chris Harting, who suffered an early spring back injury that threw him completely out of kilter, nor bronze medalist Daniel Jasinski made the German squad. Fourth place finisher Martin Kupper managed a season’s best of 62.86m.

Last year’s silver medalist, however, will compete and in spite of a lackluster 2017 campaign must be considered a threat to make the podium.

That would be Beijing champion and perennial victim of various Hartings, Piotr Malachowski. His best of 65.90m puts him tenth on this season’s performance list, and for the first time in about a hundred years he did not win the Polish championships, but his experience and toughness make him a contender.

Speaking of contenders, there are twenty-two throwers who have gone beyond 65 meters this year, among them Gerd Kanter (65.87m) who even Malachowski probably refers to as “Gramps,” Robert Urbanek (66.73m) who  defeated Malachowski at the Polish nationals, and the Lithuanian Andrius Gudzius (68.61m).

That said, let’s make some picks.

Trofimuk

Gold: Milanov

 Reason: As Trofimuk humbly puts it, “He is the only sensible pick. His performance at Beijing gives him the edge over the guys throwing the best this season.”

Silver: Malachowski

Reason: “He always performs well at the World Championships.”

Bronze: Stahl

Reason: “He’s having a great year. He’s young and  hungry for a medal at a major championship. Plus, he’s bigger than a refrigerator.”

McQ

Gold: Harting

 Reason: When the young bucks Milanov, Stahl, and Dacres start warming up in London, everything had better go right for them or Rio-inspired self questioning might be tough to suppress. Those guys are only human, right? Harting might be too, but he’s that odd, Michael Jordan kind of human who performs best in situations where others would be mired in doubt. In 2009, Malachowski throws a national record 69.15m in round five at the Berlin World Championships putting Harting in the position of having to conjure up a PR in  round six. We all remember how that turned out. At the London Olympics, he felt like crap. At the Moscow Worlds, he had a back injury. He still found a  way to win. If nerves or what have you keep the best throwers in the 67-meter range next week,  he’s my pick to squeeze out a winner.

Silver: Stahl

Reason: Like Trofimuk, I respect a man who could punch out a dinosaur. Even if he has a kind-of-crappy day, he’s going  66 meters.

Bronze: Malachowski

Reason: Sentiment. Watch this ESPN vid and tell me you won’t be rooting for him:

http://www.espn.com/videohub/video/clip?id=19906682&categoryid=null

 

London Predictions: Men’s Shot

It is time for my former thrower, Pat Trofimuk, and I to make our annual Big Meet predictions. I’m a bit worried that this will be Trofimuk’s last time helping me as he is but a few days from getting married and I know from experience that what a fiance puts up with a wife may not. If the little woman makes him choose between spending time keeping track of throws stats and spending time watching professional wrestling…. I’ll need a new partner.

That said, here we go.

Men’s Shot

When I played little league baseball, there were always one or two kids in the league who were legitimately eleven years old but through some quirk of nature looked to be in their mid-20’s.

I exaggerate, but you know what I mean. There were always a couple of guys who were way more physically mature than all the  other kids, and when they pitched against your team you knew you had no shot.

And I don’t mean you had no chance of winning the game. You had no shot at making contact with the ball.

You’d slouch your way to the batter’s box knowing you were about to strike out and just hoping that you could get through it without taking a fastball to the head.

Three or four pitches later you’d be on your way to the safety of the dugout, glad to have survived.

Competing against Ryan Crouser must be kind of like that right now.

In a world filled with outstanding shot putters (14 have gone over 70 feet this year) he appears to be unbeatable.

Twenty-two meters in an Olympics or World Championships is a great performance.  Throw that in London, and you’ll for sure be in the hunt…for second place.

Consider Joe Kovacs.

The 2015 World Champion, Joe is a super explosive, technically excellent putter. Just entering his prime, he can already make a case as being one of the best of all time.

Accordingly, he came up huge this past June at the USATF Championships with a sixth round bomb of 22.35m (73’4″for you provincial types).

That’s a monster put, and because of it, Joe only lost by a foot when Crouser responded with 22.65m.

Former indoor World Champion Ryan Whiting, another all-time great, also showed up big in Sacramento. After enduring a couple of sub par years due to injuries, his  21.54m demonstrated that he is once again ready to fight for a spot on the podium at big meets. It also left him nearly four feet behind Crouser.

How about New Zealander Tom Walsh, the Rio bronze-medalist who nailed a 22.04m toss just the other day at the MF Athletics Shot Put Invitational?  (By the way, how in the heck does a guy from New Zealand, where the season begins in January, still make great throws seven months later? Tom, you need to give a seminar on that some time soon. Until then, we will all start eating vegemite.)

But again, even if Tom goes twenty-two meters in London (and he may well do that) he’s not walking away with the gold.

How about my guy David Storl? I love the glide technique, and this two-time World Champ may be the best glider ever. Like Whiting, he has been limited by injuries the past couple of years, but his recent 21.87m put suggests that he’s in great shape.

If he matches that distance in London, he’ll have an outside shot…at a bronze medal.

Anyway, you get the idea.

So, without further ado, here are our predictions.

Trofimuk:

Gold: Crouser

     Reason: Duh!

Silver: Walsh

     Reason: To quote Trofimuk, “He has been tearing it up on the Diamond League. At his last Diamond League meeting, his worst throw was 21.46m. Plus, he’s no wussy. Plus, I love New Zealand.”

Bronze: Kovacs

      Reason: Trofimuk says that three spinners will medal, (is it just me, or does that sound a tad biased?) and that Joe is the only contestant aside from Walsh and Crouser who can throw 22.00m.

 

McQ:

Gold: Crouser

     Reason: At the 2013 NCAA Championships in Eugene, a young, skinny Crouser was sitting on two fouls as he entered the  ring for his third throw. According to Dan Block, probably the greatest thrower in Illinois prep history who was competing for Wisconsin at that time, Crouser took a slow motion safety throw. The result? Twenty meters thirty-one for the win. Crouser beating a stacked NCAA field, which included two-time defending champ Jordan Clarke, with a half-speed throw suggested the possibility of  future dominance. Now, four years and forty pounds later, the future has arrived.

Silver: Kovacs

     Reason: Joe is the only putter in the field aside from Crouser who can  go 22.20m on a “good” rather than “insanely great” day. Insanely great performances are rare at the World Championships.

Bronze: Storl

     Reason: At the risk of sounding like that friend who just can’t accept when a relationship is over…”If only she’d give me another chance!”…”Dude, she’s been married for five years”…”I know, but if only she’d give me another chance!”…I am not ready to give up on my favorite glider. Have I told you about the time I sneaked into a press conference for the German team at the 2014 European Championships to ask Storl why he had switched to throwing non-reverse? Some might call that stalking. I prefer “loyalty.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeff Rebholz rotational shot webinar August 3rd

A few years ago, I had a quick, tough, undersized (5’9″, 160 lbs) thrower named Branden Miller. I was  very proud of Branden when he threw 47′  with the 12 lb shot and 157′ with the 1.6k discus his senior year of high school. After all, he  was undersized.

He then moved on to Carthage College and in four years of throwing for Jeff Rebholz he reached 54’7″ with the 16 lb shot, 163′ with the 2k disc, 189′ with the hammer, and 168′ with the javelin. Apparently Jeff did not notice that Branden was too small to throw those distances.

Jeff moved on to Towson University last fall, and he is currently working on converting one of his glide shot putters to the rotational style.

On August 3rd, at 6:00pm central time, he will share his strategy for helping that athlete develop solid rotational technique.

This webinar is free. Jeff will field questions throughout.

I invite you to set aside the time to attend. Jeff is a great young coach, and anyone who trains rotational putters at any level will benefit from interacting with him.

Please register here:

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/6ae3a0a8a377754ec5b9141539e44ee6

 

 

 

Dani Bunch spins her way to relevance

If you were surprised to see Dani Bunch dueling Raven Saunders and Michelle Carter for the national title and world lead last weekend in Sacramento, you were not alone.

I crossed paths with Dani twice over the last five years, and neither time did I walk away thinking “Holy cow, she might be national champion some day.”

The first instance came during the 2012 NCAA Outdoor Championships in Des Moines, back in the days when world class track meets were occasionally held in the Midwest.

Dani, a sophomore at Purdue, threw 16.21m and finished ninth in her flight. At that time, Tia Brooks, a junior at Oklahoma who won in Des Moines with a toss of 18.44m, and Michelle Carter, who a year later would break the American record with a throw of 20.24m and then break it again with a gold-medal winning put of 20.63m in Rio, seemed to be the ascendant putters among American women.

The next time I ran across Dani was at the Chicagoland  Throws Series in 2015. She was in her first season as a professional and had, just three months prior, switched from the glide to the rotational shot technique.

She threw 17.28m that day, more than a meter under her glide PR. The fact that she was able to function  at all as a rotational putter so quickly after making the change was impressive, as was her determination to continue in the sport when she appeared to be a long way from cracking the upper echelon of throwers.  But, if you watch this video, you’ll see that she had a lot of work to do if she hoped to develop a level of comfort with the spin technique similar to the other elite putters in the competition, Brittany Smith, Becky O’Brien, and Tori Bliss.

Here is an interview I did with Dani at the  Chicagoland meet. Please ignore my stupidity in  occasionally using the words “glide” and “glider” when referring to the rotational technique.

After the Chicagoland meet, Dani went back to Lafayette, Indiana, and hunkered down with her college coach Keith McBride to pursue her dream of becoming a world class putter.

For the rest of 2015 and all of 2016, she toiled in relative anonymity.

Last year, at the Olympic Trials, she thew 17.37m in the prelims then fouled all three throws in the finals.

As noted above, Michelle Carter grabbed gold in Rio with a sensational sixth-round effort. Also in Rio, Raven Saunders established herself as the thrower of the future by hitting a PR of 19.35m to finish fifth.

With the spotlight on those two ladies, Dani began the 2017 campaign no longer in “relative” anonymity. She had achieved a state of “complete” anonymity.

But, according to Coach McBride, he and Dani could tell long before the start of this season that she had the capability to become a nineteen or even twenty-meter putter.

The key was having the courage, patience, and possibly misplaced confidence to commit to the rotational technique.

McBride had actually broached the possibility of converting to the spin a couple of times during Dani’s career at Purdue.

“She had kind of a rotational finish anyway,” he told me in a recent conversation. “She was kind of up and turning all the time. She was that weird glider who would throw out of bounds to the left because she turned so far through it.”

This video provides a clear illustration of Dani’s glide finish:

“So, I brought it up with her once or twice in college, but she wasn’t mentally ready for it. Her argument was, ‘I can’t throw the discus, so how can I spin in the shot?’  If the athlete isn’t ready for it, you can’t shove it down their throat.”

Finally, in February of her first year out of college, Dani competed in a meet at Purdue. Still a glider, she threw well under eighteen meters.

Throwers from Southern Illinois University also competed in that meet, and their coach at the time, John Smith (now at Ole Miss) advised McBride and Dani to make the switch to the rotational style.

Smith remembers that moment well, and described it to me in a recent conversation.

“When Raven was a freshman, we went to a meet at Purdue. It was  Dani’s first year out of college, and Keith told me that he was thinking about switching Dani to the spin. I asked him how far does she throw from a stand? He told me fifty-two feet. I said if she wants to compete at the world level as a glider, she’s going to have to have a fifty-seven foot stand throw like Michelle or Tia Brooks. If you don’t think you can do that, then she needs to spin.”

With the US Indoor Championships looming, McBride and Dani decided to postpone the decision. After finishing seventh with a toss of 17.11m at that meet,  Dani came home ready to make the switch.

I asked McBride if it was hard on Dani to accept throwing shorter distances while she adapted to the rotational style, but as he remembers it, “She threw far right away. Her first meet with the spin, a little meet somewhere in Illinois, she threw 18.50m. Then she went to Tuscon Elite and threw 18.89m.”

As he anticipated, Dani’s rotational-style finish in her glide lent itself to the full out rotational technique.

“She had been a rotational finisher from day one,  and knowing how to strike in that position helped.  Out of the back we were just trying to hit that power position she had been using in the glide. We kind of melded the spin and glide.”

The most challenging part of the conversion turned out to be getting Dani to the point where her technique could hold up under the  pressure of big meets.

Her tribulations at the 2016 Trials typified her struggles. “The issue,” according to  McBride, “from the very first was not “Can we throw far?’ but ‘Can we stay in the ring?’ She was tattooing stuff right from the start.”

The 2017 season began in promising fashion as Dani hit 19.12m at a meet in Lafayette, which gave her the world lead at the time. That throw enabled Dani’s agent to finagle an invitation to the Diamond League meeting in Shanghai.

She finished second there with a toss of 18.98m.

That result earned Dani an invitation to a meet in Brazil.

She won that competition with a 19.55m bomb, and as a result was invited to the Diamond League meeting in Rome where she finished second with a put of 18.95m.

McBride considers the Rome meeting to have been a pivotal moment in Dani’s development. “In the fifth round, Michelle Carter passed her up, and Dani was like ‘I’m not losing to her’ and she came back and beat her in the sixth round. That showed us that she finally had the confidence she needed to make big throws in pressure situations.”

Dani proved that definitively with an epic performance at the US Nationals. She opened at 18.92m and followed that with a solid 19.18m that seemed likely to net her a spot in the top three. Not willing to take any chances against a dangerous field, Dani cranked up the intensity and after two fouls killed one in the fifth round. Her 19.64m put her into first, and after Raven blasted out a PR of her own (19.76m), Dani showed that the 19.64m was no fluke by powering her final attempt out to 19.57m.

She is now ranked second in the world with two competitions (the Portland and New York stops on the Tracktown Series tour) remaining before Worlds.

And what might the future bring, now that Dani is fully confident with the rotational style?

“As big as that throw in Sacramento was,” says McBride, “she can go farther. She definitely has twenty-meter power, and  if we keep progressing she will be challenging the USA record some day.”

From eighteen-meter glider to twenty-meter spinner in two years time? It sounds crazy, but combine Dani’s determination, her great working relationship with Coach McBride, her innate feel for the rotational style, and the intense rivalry brewing between her,  Raven, and Michelle, and you just can’t put it past her.

Pun intended.

 

 

 

 

 

John Smith on Raven’s bomb at USA’s

Holy crap, there is some great shot putting going on in this country right now, and if you signed up for the NBC Gold package you got to see a good chunk of an epic women’s shot competition at the USATF National Championships last week.

When the Sacramento dust cleared, the United States had the two leading women’s putters in the world, and the defending Olympic champion was, surprisingly, not one of them.

Unfortunately, NBC Gold coverage of the final three rounds was spotty, and throws fans were left to piece together the action as best they could by checking the live results page.

Luckily,  John Smith, coach of newly minted US champion Raven Saunders, agreed to provide not only his perspective on a truly amazing competition, but also to share some insights into the training that has made Raven the thrower to beat at the Worlds in London this August.

Here’s the way things played out on a sweltering afternoon in Sacramento:

Dani Bunch got the party started  with throws of 18.92m and 19.18m in rounds one and two. The latter toss seemed likely to have secured her a ticket to Worlds.

Michelle Carter,the aforementioned Olympic champ, got rolling in round three with a 19.34m toss, which appeared likely to guarantee  her a trip  to London.

Raven, meanwhile, struggled to find a groove. After an immensely disappointing fourth place finish at the NCAA meet two weeks earlier, it would have been good for her and Coach Smith’s state of mental health if she had killed one early, but it was not to be.

Her opener was an easy 18.30m safety throw, good enough to buy five more tosses and to briefly quiet her version of the little voice we all have in our heads that says things like, “You blew it at the NCAA’s so for sure you’ll blow it here!” but unlikely to clinch a spot in the top three.

A round two 17.75m gave any lingering doubts a bit more credibility, and after a foul in round three, the little voice in her head rose to a bellow.

Actually, it was Coach Smith’s voice this time.

According to Smith,  “the foul was sixty-three and a half feet. That  throw would have put her on the team! She nailed it. She watched it. She stepped out. So she got her rear end chewed for that.”

Meanwhile, Felisha Johnson bumped Raven to fourth place with a third round toss of 18.64m.

Maddeningly, NBC Gold went offline for a few minutes as the the top eight were re-ordered for the final three rounds.

At that point the top three were Carter (19.25m), Bunch (19.18m), and Johnson (18.64m).

I recall Charles Barkley once making fun of fans who listened to NBA games on the radio. Imagine what he’d think of us throws geeks reduced to staring at the live results page on the NCAA site in order to keep up with what was happening in the shot while NBC Gold went to break and, upon returning to the air, took us on a guided tour of downtown Sacramento. Loved that vid of the steamboat, though!

In round four, Raven hit 18.58m, which did not move her up in the standings.

Carter went 19.28m, but the top three remained unchanged.

All those marks were well within Raven’s reach if she could just find her rhythm.

According to Smith,  she was in shape to launch a big one.

“Two days before  the  competition, she threw sixty-five feet with an eight-pound shot, full reverse staying in the ring, so I knew she was ready. In a meet Raven can always match or throw a foot farther than what she does in practice with the eight.”

So, he was confident as Raven stepped in for a fifth throw that she was perfectly capable of moving into the top three.

Instead, she fouled again.

As a throws coach, I often imagine being in a similar situation and saying just the right thing to my athlete who then heads back into the ring and blasts out the throw of his life.  Usually, it’s something along the lines of “You got this! Keep your chest up going  to the middle and you’ll be fine!”

John Smith, however, operates in the real world where emotions run hot especially during a long afternoon in the searing California sun with a spot on the national team in the balance.

So what did he say to Raven after her fifth round foul?

“You’d better get your ass moving, because they’re writing your obituary right now!”

Moments later, Dani Bunch dropped a fifth-round 19.64m, for a new PR and the lead.

Moments after that,  Monique Riddick stepped in and killed her final throw of the day. It measured 18.89m and knocked Raven down to fifth.

Now, I’m no fan of zombie movies, but my friends who are tell me that it is possible for someone to look really dead but still not be dead.

That turned out to be the case here, and Coach Smith used an analogy from another movie genre to describe the moment:

“After Riddick hit that throw, Raven spit on the ground like Clint Eastwood would do in the movies before he got ready to kill someone. Connie {Price Smith, former Olympian and current head coach at Ole’ Miss} said that when she saw Raven spit on the ground, she knew Raven was going to hit that last throw.”

Hit it she did.

According to Coach Smith, “It wasn’t a pretty throw, but it was evil. It was an evil throw. It had no height on it, and she  was a little bit over-rotated.  But it was nasty.”

Nineteen meters and seventy-six centimeters worth of nasty, to be exact.

A PR.

A national title.

A world lead.

A redemption from the embarrassment of the NCAA meet.

And, definitive proof that at the international level the  glide shot technique is dead?

Certainly, Michelle Carter might quibble with that suggestion, but in Smith’s view, “On  the women’s side, we are the best shot putting nation in the world because we made the leap to the spin.”  

He argues that in order to be a world class glider, an athlete must have a huge stand throw. A glider striving to throw twenty meters would have to stand mid-eighteen meters to have a chance.

Smith believes that the rotational technique makes it possible for a less powerful but more athletic thrower to reach world class distances.

Watching the progress of Jill Camarena-Williams (the now-retired bronze medalist at the 2011 Worlds) convinced him of this.

“Jill was a fifty-nine-foot glider, then she became a sixty-six-foot spinner and I always felt like Connie was a better athlete than Jill. I always wanted Connie to spin when she was throwing, but she never wanted to do it. Back then, [the 1980’s-1990’s] you only did the spin because you couldn’t glide.”

As he became more and more devoted to the rotational method, Smith developed a practice progression for refining his throwers’ technique.

“The drill work is non-reverse stands, non-reverse half turns, then something called non-reverse ‘giant steps,’ where you start in the back, step to the center, pause, then do a half turn and throw non- reverse. Then we do ‘walking fulls,’ where you turn, step, turn and throw kind of in slow motion. From there we do non-reverse fulls and then reverse fulls.”

“With Raven, practice is a non-reverse full into a net followed by a  non-reverse throw into the field.  [Note: Coach Smith has a net set up at the outdoor throwing facility at Ole Miss] She starts with a sixteen-pound shot, then moves to a twelve, then an eight, and finally a three-kilogram. Then we start over with the sixteen.” 

“Some days, Raven might take seventy to eighty throws.  We keep going until the numbers die off so much that practice is over. She might repeat that progression three or four times and she might start out with ten to fifteen throws into the net (stands, half tuns, giant steps) before she even does fulls.”

She will continue with some variation of that system for the next six weeks then travel to  London where she and Dani Bunch will try to prove to the world that the glide is dead, with Michelle Carter along to make the counter argument.

And, while there are many amazing tourist attractions in that city that are suitable to dress up a broadcast, please NBC Gold, this time stay with the women’s shot from start to finish! Based on what happened in Sacramento, it will be worth it.