Chase Ealey (© Getty Images)
Before most of the field knew what hit it Saturday night, Chase Ealey had already won the women’s shot put at the World Athletics Championships Oregon22.
Ealey was throwing first in the order in the shot put final at the reimagined Hayward Field at the University of Oregon and wasted no time.
On that first throw, Ealey launched the shot 20.49m to immediately put the rest of the field in a hole from the start.
That throw held up as the winning mark as Ealey became the first United States’ woman to win a shot put gold medal at an outdoor World Athletics Championships.
“The list came out and me and my coach decided that was the move,” Ealey said. “I warmed up bigger than I competed, which happens a lot. But I warmed up and every throw was at 20 (meters) so I was like, ‘I think we can do this.’
“The minute I got in there and the cheers and the crowd, I knew it would happen, and so I felt really good about it.”
Ealey’s throw was just off her personal best of 20.51m set last month when she won the event at the U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championships. That mark broke the Hayward Field record and made her the No. 2 thrower in American history.
On Saturday, she made her own American history with the win. Prior to Saturday, the only outdoor World Athletics Championships medals won by U.S. women were bronzes by Jillian Camarena-Williams in 2011 and by Michelle Carter in 2015 and 2017.
Ealey’s win was also the first individual medal for a U.S. athlete at WCH Oregon22 on top of being the first in U.S. women’s shot put history.
“My main goal was to come out here and get gold and to do it at home and in front of my family,” Ealey said. “To be the first medal here, the first medal outdoors for us, it’s all amazing. I feel like a bunch of firsts and I’m really proud of it.”
Getting a big mark early in the competition is not the norm for Ealey, she said, and put her in a different position as she waited to see if anyone would surpass her.
“It’s nerve-wracking, but I felt like if I had to, I could have got another throw out there,” Ealey said. “It’s hard to tell, but I felt like my last throw, had I needed it, I was definitely at that point where I was ready to go big.”
China’s Lijiao Gong figured to be Ealey’s main competition entering the final as she was the two-time defending World Athletics Championship gold medalist and the 2020 Tokyo Olympic gold medalist. Gong was the only other woman to throw past 20m Saturday and moved closer to Ealey when she threw 20.23m in the third of six rounds. In the fifth round, Gong got even closer with a throw of 20.39m, but Ealey said she was confident she had maintained the lead based on where she saw the shot put land and where her previous mark was still viewable in the cinder sector.
Ealey also had throws of 19.82m and 20.07m in the competition.
“I feel like it was an amazing competition,” Ealey said. “Gong is a seasoned veteran, so she definitely had me on my toes the whole time, but I’m happy I pulled out the win even if it was just one throw.”
Gong, who is 33 years old, won her first outdoor World Athletics Championships medal in 2009 as a 20-year-old when she took bronze and won her sixth overall Championships medal Saturday. She also won bronze in 2013 and silver in 2015.
Jessica Schilder of the Netherlands won the bronze medal Saturday by setting a national record of 19.77m. Canada’s Sarah Mitton also threw 19.77m, but Schilder had two throws at 19.77m, and Mitton’s second-best throw was 19.18m.
Jessica Woodard was eighth for the U.S. at 18.67m, and Maggie Ewen was ninth at 18.64m.
Ealey was seventh at the 2019 World Athletics Championships, then finished fifth at the Olympic Trials last year. She won her first global medal when she finished second at the indoor World Athletics Championships in March in Belgrade, Serbia. She was second in the 2016 NCAA Outdoor Championships for Oklahoma State, and has openly discussed how it took her some time before she took track and field seriously.
"My senior of college I think I just kind of started respecting it more,” Ealey said. “And then when I went pro, I realized how amazing athletics was, which a lot of people don’t realize how amazing athletics is.
“I really started just falling in love with the sport as a whole, which made me start respecting my event more. I really felt like I could do something, and I wanted to stop being OK at something. I really turned over and started going for it."
In the other throwing event final Saturday, Pawel Fajdek of Poland became the first person to win an event five times at the outdoor World Athletics Championships when he threw 81.98m to win the men’s hammer gold medal for the fifth consecutive time. He led a 1-2 finish for Poland as Wojciech Nowicki, the 2020 Olympic gold medalist, was second at 81.03m. Eivind Henriksen of Norway, the Olympic silver medalist, was third at 80.87m.
Rudy Winkler, the American record-holder, was sixth at 78.99m, Daniel Haugh, the U.S. champion, was eighth at 78.10m, and Alex Young was 12th.
In the men’s long jump, Jianan Wang of China, the bronze medalist at the 2015 World Athletics Championships in Beijing, went 8.36m on his final jump to take the gold medal. He moved from sixth into the lead with that attempt. Greece’s Miltiadis Tentoglou, the Tokyo Olympic gold medalist, was second at 8.32m, and Switzerland’s Simon Ehammer was third at 8.16m.
Steffin McCarter and Marquis Dendy of the U.S. finished fifth and sixth, respectively, with jumps of 8.04m, and 8.02m.
By Ashley Conklin
