Recently, my friend Priit Tänava, king of stats, asked me to rank a list of ten men’s discus throwers in worst-to-best order.

I happily agreed, but it turns out that comparing great athletes from different eras is complicated! Consider the sport of baseball. Ted Williams, the fantastic Boston Red Sox player from the 1940’s and 1950’s finished his career with 521 home runs, which today has him tied for 20th on the all time list—great, but not that great. Based on his home run total, it’s hard to imagine Williams making a list of baseball’s top ten power hitters of all time, right?

But a case can be made that Williams was a much better slugger than guys who hit 100 or even 200 more home runs than him. Consider:

• Williams missed nearly five full seasons of his prime while serving in WWII and the Korean War.

• He played in an era when hitting was much more difficult because pitchers had advantages that they no longer enjoy—a higher mound, for example. Pitchers also possessed the unacknowledged but often exercised right to zing a fastball at a batter’s unprotected head to keep him from getting too comfortable at the plate, a tactic which would get them ejected and possibly suspended today.

• Steroids were not available during Williams’ career, so we can assume he notched his dingers without help from performance-enhancing drugs.

Based on these factors, some would rank Ted Williams as one of the greatest power hitters ever, maybe even in the top five all time.

Another argument could be made, though, that Williams does not belong on anyone’s top ten list because hitting was actually easier in his day. Consider:

• When Williams began his career in 1939, baseball was exclusively a white man’s sport. The color barrier was not broken until 1947, and it wasn’t until 1959 that every team finally integrated. Surely there were great black and Latino pitchers that he never had to face because of this racist policy.

• It used to be quite common for a starting pitcher to stay in the game for an entire nine innings. This meant they had to pace themselves and could not throw the ball nearly as hard as pitchers routinely do in the modern era where teams typically use four or five different pitchers each game.

All these factors make it difficult to pinpoint exactly where athletes from different eras rank in relation to each other.

That said, here’s how I’d order the list of discus studs Priit sent me:

10. Ludvik Danek

• PB 67.18m in 1974
• Olympic champ in 1972 after taking silver in ’64 and bronze in ’68
• World Record holder
• Two-time European Championships medalist (’71 gold and ’74 silver)

9. Adolfo Consolini

• PB 55.33m in 1948
• Olympic champ in 1948, silver in ’52
• World Record holder
• Three-time European Championships gold medalist (’46, ’50, ’54)

To me, Danek’s Olympic gold is more impressive because it came at the beginning of the modern professional era, but I have to give Adolfo his due for winning three European golds, which is as many as Gerd Kanter, Lars Riedel, Jurgen Schult, and Virgilijus Alekna won combined!

8. Al Oerter

• PB 69.46m in 1980
• Olympic champ in 1956, ’60, ’64, ’68
• World Record holder

Oerter was legendary for his ability to bring the heat when it counted. He famously won Olympic gold with torn rib cartilage in ’64 and tossed an Olympic Record in a rain storm to take his final gold in ’68. His four Olympic titles will never be matched.

So, why not rank him number one?

For most of Al’s career, the sport was not nearly as professional as it is today, and he did not have to put his body through what modern throwers must to remain competitive. That’s why throwers so rarely repeat as Olympic champions. Robert Harting was as tough a competitor as Oerter, but two years after taking gold at the London Olympics, he blew out his ACL during an active recovery session as he began training for 2015. Harting recovered in time to make a run at repeating in Rio, but was foiled when he wrenched his back the night before qualification while bending over to turn off a light. That’s the kind of stuff that happens when you push your body to the limit, which is what it takes to win in the modern era.

7. Jurgen Schult

• PB 74.08m in 1986
• Olympic champ in 1988, silver in ’92
• World champ in 1987, silver in ’99, bronze in ’93 and ’97
• European champ in 1990, silver in ’98, bronze in ’94
• World Record holder from 1986 to 2024
• Nine total medals at international championships

Jurgen is famous for holding the World Record for nearly 40 years, but the true measure of his greatness was the success he attained at international championships after switching to non-reverse throwing so he could be more consistent under pressure. He also made an impact on the sport by serving as a German national coach.

6. Robert Harting

• PB 70.66m in 2012
• Olympic gold in 2012
• World champ in ’09, ’11, ’13, silver in ’07
• European champ in ’12 and ’14, silver in ’10
• Eight total medals in international championships

Like Al Oerter, Robert was tough in the big competitions, winning on his final throw in Berlin 2009 and winning in spite of an injury in Moscow 2013. Handsome and charismatic, he made discus throwing look sexy and a little bit dangerous. If you’ve seen the video of the ’09 final and have never tried to rip your shirt off after a big throw or making a three-pointer in a pickup basketball game…I simply do not understand you.

Trash me if you must for putting him ahead of Jurgen and Al Oerter, but… watch the video!

5. Mac Wilkins

• PB 70.98m in 1980
• Olympic champ in ’76, silver in ’84

Even though Danek won three Olympic medals to Mac’s two, I’m putting Mac ahead of him due to his huge influence on the sport of discus throwing. Mac has inspired and mentored countless coaches and athletes over the years including Vésteinn Hafsteinsson, who ended up developing two of the guys ahead of Mac on my list. That’s why I put him above Robert, Jurgen, and Al Oerter. Also, he totally got the shaft with the 1980 Olympic boycott when he would have been a clear favorite to repeat as gold-medalist.

4. Gerd Kanter

• PB 73.38m in 2006
• Olympic champ in 2008, bronze in ’12
• World champ in 2007, silver in ’05 and ’11, bronze in ’09 and ’13
• Eleven total medals in international championships

Gerd competed during an immensely competitive era during which he had to contend with one Alekna, two Hartings, and a Malachowski. In spite of this, he took eleven international championships medals, the most for any male discus thrower.

That’s reason enough to rank him this high, but I also give him huge props for what he meant to his home country of Estonia. Winning international medals is never easy, but try doing it while carrying the hopes of an entire nation on your back.

If you’d like to read about Gerd’s amazing career, check out our book, Gerd Kanter: Five Championship Moments on Amazon!

3. Lars Riedel

• PB 71.50m in 1997
• Olympic champ in 1996, silver in ’00
• World champ in 1991, ’93, ’95, ’97, ’01, bronze in ’99
• European champ in 1998
• Nine medals at international championships

I’ll admit that my emphasis on total number of international medals is not fair to guys like Mac and Oerter whose only chance to accumulate hardware came at the Olympics, but can we ignore those five World titles won by Lars?

No, we cannot.

Also, like Robert and Mac, Lars was a charismatic presence in the sport. Unfortunately for the ladies, he usually kept his shirt on, but watching him celebrate big throws and agonize over lousy ones was great theater.

2. Virgilijus Alekna

• PB 73.88m in 2000
• Olympic champ in 2000 and ’04, bronze in ’08
• World champ in 2003 and ’05, silver in ’97 and ’01
• European champ in 2006, silver in ’02, bronze in ’98
• Ten medals at international championships

Virgilijus gets big points for unseating Lars as discus Übermensch and dominating the sport between 2000 and 2007 when Gerd finally took over. A model of consistency (he won 38 of his 39 comps between 2005 and 2006) and class, Virgilijus—like Gerd—gave his countrymen something to cheer for as they recovered from a grim half century of Soviet occupation.

As a side note, Virgilijus was the first thrower I know of to travel with his own physiotherapist, a very small dude who the other throwers referred to as “the mechanic.” With the help of that physio, Virgilijus not only dominated the sport but also had enough energy left over to sire the future World Record holder.

1. Daniel Ståhl

• PB 71.86m in 2019
• Olympic champion in 2021
• World Champion in 2019, ’23, and ’25, silver in ’17
• Six total medals at international championships

Go ahead and accuse me of recency bias, but my choice of Daniel as numero uno is more nuanced.

As you’ll see below, I’ve worked with Vésteinn Hafsteinsson on two books about Daniel, so I have a pretty good understanding of what it took for him to reach the top of the sport, and that knowledge has informed my decision.

Clearly, Daniel was born with immense physical talent.

This list is full of large, athletic dudes,
but none of them can match Daniel’s
combination of size, strength, and
smoothness in the ring.

Based on that, you might wonder why Daniel hasn’t been even more dominant in his career. Six medals in international championships is a great accomplishment, but at Daniel’s age—he turned 33 last summer—it doesn’t seem likely he’ll reach Gerd’s record of eleven. Daniel has also never won a European Championship. At the past two Europeans, in ’22 and ’24, he did not even medal. Nor did he reach the podium at the ’22 Worlds or ’24 Olympics, making him and Robert Harting the only guys on this list without multiple Olympic medals.

What’s so great about him, then?

For much of his career, Daniel was conflicted, tormented even, about living the life of a sports hero.

Daniel did not grow up wanting to be a famous athlete. Aside from his exceptional size, he was a regular kid who loved hanging out with his family and playing ice hockey with his friends. His parents had been throwers, and he picked up the shot and disc as a kid, but he did not train seriously until he was nineteen and Vésteinn Hafsteinsson took him into his group, which at the time included Gerd Kanter.

Training under Vésteinn and around Gerd gave Daniel his first glimpse of the sacrifices and level of commitment it would take to be an Olympic champion.

During the decade it took for Gerd to rise to the top of the sport, pretty much every choice he made was based on the calculus of whether or not it would help him achieve his goal of some day winning a gold medal. As a result, he led a boring life. Get up in the morning, eat and go to training. Come home, eat and rest, then back to training. Come home, eat and sleep, then tomorrow back to training.

Vésteinn remembers one time in ten years that Gerd asked to miss a session, and that was late in his career when they were at a training camp in California and someone offered Gerd—a huge basketball fan—tickets to see his first NBA game.

In a way, it was a dream scenario to have Daniel learn the habits of a champion by training alongside Gerd. The problem was that Daniel was not suited to the life of a discus monk. He hated being bored and felt terribly homesick for his family and friends while training with Vésteinn’s group in the small town of Växjö where he knew nobody and had nothing to do but lift and throw.

The situation became infinitely worse when Daniel got good.

Sweden had not suffered under the Soviet boot as had Estonia and Lithuania, but folks there were still hungry for native-grown sports champions, and when Daniel threw a world-leading 66.89m in May of 2014, he became an instant celebrity. He was recognized wherever he went and people made it quite clear that they expected him to win medals. Gold medals. Lots of them.

This put Daniel in a difficult situation. After a few years of training with Vésteinn, he understood what kind of life he’d have to lead if he was going to live up to people’s expectations. But he’d tried that life and it made him miserable. At times, he considered quitting the sport and going back to live quietly among family and friends, but how could he do that now that he’d been “outed” as a potential champion? What would people say about him then?

The four years after his breakthrough throw in 2014 were extremely tough on Daniel, on Vésteinn, and on the many people around Daniel who cared about him as more than just a discus thrower.

Then, when he finally found some equilibrium and became World Champion in 2019, the pandemic hit and threatened to deny him the chance to win Olympic gold in 2020.

Daniel overcame that, winning at Tokyo in ’21, but the following summer brought two potentially cataclysmic changes. First, Vésteinn retired from coaching. Life on the road, and the effort required to guide his group to their historic performance at the 2021 Games had finally exhausted him, and suddenly Daniel faced the prospect of continuing his career without his most important ally.

As if that were not enough, Kristjan Čeh and Mykolas Alekna burst onto the scene that summer and defeated Daniel at the ‘22 World and European Championships.

I’m not privy to Daniel’s private thoughts at that time, but he had to have been dismayed by the possibility that no matter how hard he worked going forward he’d spend the rest of his career fighting for bronze medals while regularly getting his ass kicked by two young whippersnappers.

That had to be an unpleasant prospect for a guy who’d always been haunted by the fear of disappointing his fans.

But instead of folding, Daniel came out swinging in ’23.

He and his new coach, Staffan Jönsson, clicked right away and Daniel rolled into the 2023 Worlds having put together a magnificent season. His fourth-round toss of 69.37m had him in the lead until Čeh popped a 70.02m on his final attempt. As the frontrunner going into round six, Daniel had last ups, and he responded to Čeh by launching a monster 71.46m toss that was arguably the greatest clutch throw in any international championships.

Until this past summer.

If you’re reading this piece, you’ve probably seen the video of the final in Tokyo. And you’ve probably participated in a debate regarding the conditions, the facilities, etc…

But the fact that grizzled veterans like Matty Denny and Andrius Gudžius, tough, skilled dudes, couldn’t manage to stay upright in the ring is evidence enough that this was an historically bad situation.

That’s why I’d call Daniel’s sixth-round SB 70.47m the absolute greatest clutch throw in discus history.

In no previous era of the sport has it been harder to win medals at international championships than it is right now. Daniel has overcome tremendous obstacles both internal and external to show that he’s the best thrower of the best era, and that’s enough for me to rank him first all time.

For a detailed look at how Daniel trained under his first coach, Vésteinn Hafsteinsson, check out Training for Goldon Amazon.

If you’d like to read more about the inspiring story of Daniel’s career, order Gold, the Olympic Journey of Daniel Ståhl and Vésteinn Hafsteinsson, also on Amazon.

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