Throws News for February, 2026

Each month, I’ll touch on some interesting stories in the world of throwing. In this edition, you’ll read about Jordan Geist’s great start to 2026, Ryan Crouser’s thoughts on repeating as Olympic champ and World Record holder, and the schedule of events for the 2026 World Throws Invitational at Ramona.

Geist!

After a disappointing 2025 campaign during which he failed to make the US team for Indoor or Outdoor Worlds (and as a result is not currently funded by USATF), Jordan Geist has come out smokin’ in 2026.

How hot is he? Twenty-two meters in each of his first two meets (which is half a meter farther than he managed in all of 2025) hot.

In search of insight into Jordan’s resurgence, I reached out to my good friend Joe Frontier of Throw Big Throw Far Podcast fame, the man who officiated when Jordan married former Arizona teammate and NCAA champion Sam Noennig.

According to Frontier, Jordan has been working on technical matters with two-time Indoor World shot champ Ryan Whiting,

One thing they’ve cleaned up is
Jordan’s tendency to foul on the top of
the toeboard on his reverse.

Frontier says, “they decided Jordan needed to land flat-footed inside the toeboard, which meant adjusting what his left foot was doing before it left the ground.”

The change has given Geist the confidence to go hard early and often in competition rather than holding back to avoid fouling. So far, that has made a world of difference.

Jordan’s life is currently a bit fragmented, with Sam finishing her Physician’s Assistant program in Phoenix, Whiting coaching in northern California, and Jordan himself coaching at Slippery Rock University in western Pennsylvania.

He has simplified in other ways, though. There will, for example, be no more hammer throwing for the foreseeable future. And Whiting is now in charge of Jordan’s lifting program, which will free him up from a longtime habit of overthinking his training.

“The goal,” says Frontier, “is to stop him from overanalyzing and second-guessing and turn him into a robot.”

So far, so good.

(If you’d like to get help from Ryan Whiting as you pursue your own throwing adventure, check out Thrower X.)

Good Question!

In my experience, there is no such thing as a boring interview with Ryan Crouser, who is as thoughtful as he is imposing. Knowing this, I asked Marlene Sack , daughter of my friend René, if she had any questions she’d like me to ask the GOAT as I prepared to speak with Ryan for a piece in Track and Field News. Here’s what Marlene came up with:

Marlene: Does it feel different to win a gold medal or break a World Record the second time you do it?

Crouser: It definitely does, and the Olympic Games is different than the World Record. For my first Olympics in 2016, I was straight out of college, the new kid on the block with not many expectations on my shoulders. For my next Olympics in Tokyo, I had been a full time thrower for five years so I felt a lot of pressure and then a big sense of relief when I won. In Rio, I was happy to have made the team and just hoping to maybe make the final and compete for a medal, but Tokyo was mine to lose. I was throwing really well that season and had just broken the World Record for the first time, so winning was less enjoyable and more a sense of release.

With the World Record, it has been almost the opposite. I had six competitions before I first broke the World Record where I thought I was going to do it. Everything in training indicated I was going to do it then, but in the meet I’d get a little tight. It was extremely frustrating. I would have made a huge wager that I was going to break the World Record in each of those 6 comps and it never happened. When I let the shot go on the World Record throw in ‘21, I thought, “Finally!” I had expected it on 30-plus competition attempts leading up to that moment, and I felt like I had 30 whiffs and finally made contact. Then in LA in ‘23, I was coming off a big training block with sets of five. I had been throwing well, considering I was doing 5×5 and felt beat up and tired. I did a recovery week before the meet in LA, but there were no indicators in training that I was ready to break the World Record again. But the recovery week had me feeling rested, and the ball felt light during warmups. My first static warmup went 22.00m, and I thought it would be 21.00m, so the whole day was a surprise. It was a much diff feeling than when I broke the record in ‘21. In ‘23, it was more enjoyable. It was like, “Where did this come from?”

The classic equation for happiness is expectations minus reality.

When expectations are high and the results are low you’re living in the unhappy zone. Then, when you aren’t expecting much and the ball goes far, you’re on the happy side of the equation. When you are trudging through the unhappy side of the equation and then it connects, it means more. It’s like a sigh of relief, like ok, I’m not crazy.

Reap the whirlwind!

It’s baaaack.