2024-08-04 05:15:01
PARIS — The best shot putter in track and field’s history spent this spring and summer experiencing something unusual: vulnerability.
He spent Saturday night doing the utterly familiar — dominating his competition and making history in the process.
Despite battling elbow and pectoral injuries for much of 2024, 31-year-old American Ryan Crouser won an unprecedented third consecutive Olympic gold medal in the shot put at 75 feet, 1 3/4 inches. It made him not only shot put’s farthest thrower of all time — Crouser owns the world and Olympic records — but also indisputably its most dominant.
The win broke the consecutive-gold tie he held with shot putters Ralph Rose (1904, 1908), Parry O’Brien (1952, 1956) and Tomasz Majewski (2008, 2012). The victory elevated Crouser to a rare level of control over a single event akin to Usain Bolt in the 100 and 200 meters and Carl Lewis in the long jump.
“The self-doubt, the injuries that went into this makes me appreciate it all the more,” he said.
Crouser’s win also widened the gap between American success in the event and everyone else. In 30 Summer Olympics, Americans have now claimed gold 20 times.
If the outcome appeared inevitable within the first few throws, it stood in contrast to the uncertainty of Crouser’s season, which included how he felt Saturday morning when he woke up with “a lot of unknowns.”
Crouser injured the ulnar nerve in his throwing elbow. The next month, while bench pressing, he tore a pectoral muscle. Doctors didn’t clear him to resume throwing the 16-pound metal shot until almost June.
By late July, in his final warmup before the Paris Olympics, the Oregon native was beaten for the first time in nearly a year. For the final month before the Olympics, hard training days led him to require multiple days of rest, so he opted to throw more frequently but with not as much intensity. Could he ramp it up when it mattered?
He answered that with his first throw of 74 feet, 3 ½ inches, which would have been enough to win gold by itself. He then improved his next two throws.
“I knew I had to put pressure on those guys with a big early round throw to kind of hopefully make them tighten up,” Crouser said.
When rain began falling during the fourth round, turning the ring slick, it made the gap all the more difficult to overcome. Leonardo Fabbri, the Italian who defeated Crouser in July in London, lost his footing on his fourth attempt, and others also slipped.
Yet Crouser appeared to have fun throughout the night. When he was introduced to the sold-out, raucous crowd, he bent to one knee in a pose that was an homage to “The Thinker,” the bronze sculpture by Rodin.
“A little shout out to a French sculptor here,” he said.
Fellow American Joe Kovacs became the first in Olympic history to earn three silver medals in the same individual event.
The gold adds another line to a resume unlike any other.
Crouser owns 11 of the 20 farthest marks of all time, all of which were thrown between 2021 and this season. Only four men have thrown past 75 feet, 5 ½ (23 meters) — and Crouser has done it nine times. The three others have combined for five.
It is not as though Crouser has won multiple Olympic and world championships while beating up on inferior competition, either. Throwers owning history’s second-, fifth- and seventh-best marks were in the Paris final.
Crouser’s eight-year hold on the event, which also includes two outdoor world championships in 2022 and 2023 and an indoor world title from March, could lead him to leave the event behind for discus. He has considered adding discus to his repertoire in 2026.
“It’s a bit of a walking a tightrope between, I’d like to throw discus, but I can’t take away too much from shot,” Crouser said. “Because the goal for me would be to retire in 2028 as an American [athlete] retiring on American soil and the Olympics would be a dream come true.”
He later clarified that his thoughts on retirement were still far off in consideration.
Crouser has maintained his hold on the event through discipline —he doesn’t drink alcohol except for the 10 days off he takes from training every year, he said — and a rare willingness to rethink a throwing technique that had already earned him gold in Rio and Tokyo.
The self-coached Crouser holds degrees in economics and finance and tested numerous ideas before hitting on what was later dubbed the “Crouser slide” in December 2023 that helped him reset his own world record, and become the first to ever throw past 77 feet, just six months later. It helps Crouser use his 6-foot-7 frame to get the most out of his big frame in a ring that is only seven feet in diameter.
Within eight months of his technique change, he’d won his second consecutive world championship, despite discovering he had two blood clots in his left leg. It was the start of a series of health challenges that Crouser said stemmed from overcompensating after realizing he could not pull off the same workouts as when he was 26 or even 28.
It forced Crouser to think through his event while physically sidelined. His routine now involves plenty of massages and icing.
This has not been his season.
But it was still his gold medal.
