{"id":2913,"date":"2020-04-24T21:13:57","date_gmt":"2020-04-25T02:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mcthrows.com\/?p=2913"},"modified":"2020-05-02T20:32:39","modified_gmt":"2020-05-03T01:32:39","slug":"an-interview-with-vesteinn-hafsteinsson-part-1-from-athlete-to-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcthrows.com\/?p=2913","title":{"rendered":"An Interview With V\u00e9steinn Hafsteinsson. Part 1: From Athlete to coach"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On Thursday, April 30th , V\u00e9steinn Hafsteinsson, one of the most accomplished throws coaches in the world, examined the technique of World Champion discus thrower Daniel St\u00e5hl\u00a0in a Mcthrows.com webinar<\/a>. In advance of his appearance on the webinar, V\u00e9steinn was gracious enough to sit for an interview about his experiences as a coach at the highest level of the sport. This is the fir<\/em>st of four posts based on that interview<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is impossible these days to follow college football without being exposed each fall to the sight and sound of thousands of red clad drunks fervently chanting \u201cRoll Tide Roll\u201d as their gridiron heroes do just that, but I honestly never thought I\u2019d hear those words uttered by a proud son of Iceland who lives in Sweden and has coached an Estonian to an Olympic discus title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, two minutes into my conversation with V\u00e9steinn Hafsteinsson–coach of discus greats Gerd Kanter and Daniel St\u00e5hl along with many other world class throwers–there it was. \u201cRoll Tide Roll!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had no choice, really. I\u2019d done some research on V\u00e9steinn prior to our call, and when I discovered that he had attended the University of Alabama during the 1980\u2019s I alerted my wife. She’d spent a year at \u2018Bama around the same time, and you don\u2019t run into many Crimson Tide fans in the suburbs of Chicago where we live, so as soon as V\u00e9steinn\u2019s face popped up on my screen she leaned in and began bonding with him over their shared admiration of Paul \u201cBear\u201d Bryant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a lifelong Notre Dame fan, I felt more than a little vexed by this, but I recovered quickly as V\u00e9steinn began graciously sharing his experiences as one of the most successful throws coaches ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turns out that there were a dozen Icelanders on the Alabama track team in the early 1980\u2019s, including V\u00e9steinn\u2019s older brother. The first to make the move to Tuscaloosa was Hreinn Halld\u00f3rsson, a twenty-one-meter shot putter who V\u00e9steinn remembers as a \u201cthirty-two-year-old freshmen.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe is the reason they changed the rules about age in the NCAA,\u201d recalled V\u00e9steinn, who has fond memories of his \u2018Bama days. \u201cIt was a culture shock,\u201d he says now, \u201cbut we had a little Icelandic colony and it was a great school, a great campus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

V\u00e9steinn met his wife–a Swedish citizen–while at Alabama, and they settled in Sweden in 1986 as he embarked on a ten-year career as professional discus thrower. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

V\u00e9steinn describes himself as an \u201cokay\u201d discus thrower who competed in many Grand Prix 1 and Grand Prix 2 meets as well as four Olympics and five World Championships. He estimates that he averaged around 59.50m-61.50m throwing in stadiums. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

V\u00e9steinn regularly competed against the likes of J\u00fcrgen Schult, Wolfgang Schmidt, and Lars Reidel, and treasures the memory of facing–and defeating–Al Oerter twice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He often struggled, though, to throw his best in the biggest meets and though he surpassed the sixty-five-meter mark many times during his career with a PB of 67.64m in 1989, his best finish in an Olympics or World Championships was eleventh in the Barcelona Games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was a good thrower when it came to throwing far,\u201d he says now, \u201cbut I was not a very good performer at the most important competitions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That eleventh-place finish in Barcelona still rankles him, as Cuba\u2019s Roberto Moya took the bronze medal with a rather pedestrian 64.12m. Anything close to his PB would have put him in contention for a medal, but V\u00e9steinn’s best throw in the final was 60.06m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back, V\u00e9steinn attributes his difficulties at the Olympics and Worlds to a lack of confidence. \u201cI came from a very small country with no tradition of winning any medals. People in Iceland never really expect to win anything. In America, winning is everything. You don\u2019t celebrate a silver or bronze medal. It was different in Iceland. I trained hard and I was pretty good, but I never believed I would get a medal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After competing at the 1996 Olympics, V\u00e9steinn decided that it was time to move on to a new career. Inspired by the memory of two youth coaches who\u2019d had a huge impact on him (\u201cThey were my idols,\u201d he says) and determined to pursue the Olympic success that eluded him as an athlete, he found work as a personal trainer and began coaching a young Icelandic discus thrower named Magn\u00fas Hallgr\u00edmsson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under V\u00e9steinn\u2019s tutelage, Hallgr\u00edmsson achieved a PB of 63.09m and qualified for the 2000 Olympics, but his career was derailed by injuries. \u201cI did a lot of mistakes with him,\u201d V\u00e9steinn says looking back. \u201cHe should have broken my Icelandic record, but I coached him way too hard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vowing not to repeat those mistakes, V\u00e9steinn hoped that Fate would bring him an athlete he could mold into an Olympic medal contender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fate complied on November 1st, 2000, when out of the blue he received a phone call from an Estonian sports journalist named Raul Rebane. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know who I am,\u201d Raul told him, \u201cbut I think I have someone for you. A young man with big hands!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The young man\u2019s name was Gerd Kanter, and meeting him would change the course of V\u00e9steinn\u2019s life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next: V\u00e9steinn and Gerd Kanter conquer the discus world.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Thursday, April 30th , V\u00e9steinn Hafsteinsson, one of the most accomplished throws coaches in the world, examined the technique of World Champion discus thrower Daniel St\u00e5hl\u00a0in a Mcthrows.com webinar. In advance of his appearance on the webinar, V\u00e9steinn was gracious enough to sit for an interview about his experiences as a coach at the … Continue reading An Interview With V\u00e9steinn Hafsteinsson. Part 1: From Athlete to coach<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,5,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discus","category-interviews","category-webinar"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8knIb-KZ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcthrows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcthrows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcthrows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcthrows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcthrows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mcthrows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcthrows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcthrows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcthrows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}