Flashes of Panic

How often do you get to say you were there when something broke through?

Admittedly, in the track and field world, “breakthrough” is not saying much. But in the last four or five years, there has definitely been more attention paid to the shot put than there was, say, a decade ago. There’s buzz around John Godina, two-time Olympic silver medalist Adam Nelson, etc. Witness, after all, the Titan Games, which I mentioned a few months ago. They’re throwing at the Boston Indoor Games for the first time, this month.

I think I can trace it all back to one moment in Sacramento, four and a half years ago. It was the final round of the shot at the 2000 Olympic Trials, with four throwers in contention. I was in the stands at that end of the track, because that’s where I had access to the press area. As each throw topped the next, and the Olympic team started to take shape, they started to celebrate.

Yeah, celebrate. Remember, these are very big boys, and they’ve trained hours to fling a sixteen-pound ball as far as possible. There’s a tremendous amount of grace involved in getting the most energy behind the shot within the tight circle they throw from. (Finicky note: “Shot put” is the name of an event, and just as in “high jump” and “long jump” the second word is a verb. You put a shot. You do not throw a shot put.) When they let it go, they scream like they’d just dropped it on their foot. And when they see it land beyond the qualifying mark, and the white flag goes up… well, yeah, they do mid-air chest-bumps with their buddies. It’s like watching elephants samba.

The TV cameras were there, and they made national highlights broadcasts. When Nelson went on to win silver in Sydney, that kept the momentum going. Now there’s the Titan Games, the shot final at Olympia last summer… and a featured spot in Boston, which will inevitably be a standing-room-only affair.

So, yeah, I was there.

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