Valarie Allman, winner of the discus at the Continental Tour Gold meeting at Mt SAC (© Kirby Lee)
Val Allman will step into the discus circle at the World Athletics Championships Oregon22 as the favorite.
That’s what happens when you win the Olympic gold medal in any event.
For Allman, who is 27, winning the gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics has brought on more fame than she could have imagined.
All signs show that she has managed the post-Olympic fame with the same aplomb that made her the best discus thrower in the world.
“I think she’s handled it as well as anyone can,” said Zebulon Sion, who has coached Allman since 2017 when they were both at Stanford University. “She doesn’t really view herself as the Olympic champion. She’s been humble and modest and her true self the whole time, which I think is hard to do. She’s learned how to embrace fans.
“One of the most positive things has been the youth, young girls being super engaging with her, and really looking up to her.”
When Allman competes in the first World Athletics Championships held on U.S. soil at the reimagined Hayward Field at the University of Oregon from July 15–24, she’ll be attempting to become the first American woman to medal in the event at the World Athletics Championships. It will “be one of the most incredible full-circle moments” for Allman, whose first international championship competition was a second-place finish in the discus at the 2014 World U20 (Junior) Athletics Championships, which was also held at Hayward Field.
“I am so excited for this World Championships,” Allman said. “When I was competing at the Pre Classic (in May), I found myself looking around, feeling a sense of deep pride that this is our home track, that this is what the United States gets to show the world as we host one of the greatest, I believe, major championships that will ever happen in our sport.
“I’m extremely motivated to be at my best for this championship, having my family there, wearing the USA uniform. It’s definitely a moment that I’m really hoping I’ll look back on for the rest of my career with viewing as kind of the ones that’s most special.”
Allman, who turned pro in 2019, has already had plenty of special moments in her career but none bigger than last summer when she became just the third American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in the discus.
“In ways it has dramatically changed my life," Allman said. “I think that being able to have that experience, that is one of the pinnacles of your career and it is so affirming of success, getting an Olympic medal. It’s given me a deep sense of confidence that what I’m doing is something that’s really special. I feel it the most when I’m at competitions like the Diamond League, or I had a small meet in San Diego, and there’s people that are just so excited to say hello or ask for a picture and it’s in those moments that I really pinch myself that I remember what happened almost a year ago.”
A little less than a year ago Allman became the first U.S. woman to win the gold medal since Stephanie Brown Trafton shocked the world when she won the gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Lillian Copeland was the other American to win Olympic gold when she did so in 1932. Beyond Copeland and Brown Trafton, the only other U.S. Olympic medal in the event was a silver by Leslie Deniz at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
For Allman, getting to the point of being the Olympic gold-medal favorite was a hard journey to plan with so few American role models given the lack of international success by U.S. women’s discus throwers. Because of that, Allman said Brown Trafton has been instrumental in her development.
“She’s been a wonderful role model for me and incredibly supportive," Allman said. “Having her showed me that it was possible, which was really important. However, there haven’t been a ton of American women that have really exceled to the top, across the board, whether that’s in world rankings or Diamond League performances, and Stephanie was really kind of the anomaly relative to our sport.
"It’s definitely been a journey being kind of the first American women to do this in the way that we have, but I think it’s also been a strength to look at it with a unique perspective and kind of figure out our own way to find success.”
Allman made the U.S. team for the 2017 World Athletics Championships in London (didn’t advance out of qualifying) and the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar (seventh-place finish) before the COVID-19 pandemic put the track and field world on pause in 2020. Despite the uncertainty of the season, Allman made the most of it.
“2020 was one of the most pivotal years in my career,” she said. “I think had the pandemic not happened, I could have been in medal contention at the Olympics, but while it felt devastating and everything got delayed in the moment, it truly ended up being a blessing to be able to have more time to develop and mature and be able to be composed when the Olympics came.”
In her only outdoor competition of 2020, Allman broke 70 meters for the first time with a throw of 70.15m at the Iron Wood Throws Center Invitational in Idaho. She also broke the American record of 69.17m set by Gia Lewis-Smallwood in 2014. With the pandemic halting the sport, she and Sion went to work to get fitter, stronger and had “the time to work on our technical model and I fell in love with the sport again," Allman said.
“I think for so many years, I was so focused on trying to be ready for NCAA Championships or U.S. Championships, that I really forgot that my sport is fun and positive, and it’s cool to be out in the sun and be in the grass and have good conversations with someone,” Allman said. “And I really felt like when we didn’t have that objective meet coming up that was X days away, it was just so fun to reconnect. And when the Iron Wood meet happened, I knew we had been putting in really good work, but it was so validating that I was able to break that 70-meter mark.
“I think so many athletes put in a lot of work but didn’t get to see that materialize in a meet and the fact that that happened for us, and it was the American record, was the ultimate springboard heading into 2021.”
That springboard became a launching pad for long throws throughout 2021 for Allman. After wins in four of her first five meets, she went to the U.S. Olympic Team Trials – Track & Field and threw 70.01m in qualifying — a meet and Hayward Field record. In the finals the next day, she had four throws over 68 meters and two over 69 meters, winning the event by almost 25 feet.
Jorinde van Klinken, the NCAA champion for Arizona State from Netherlands, entered the Olympics with the world’s best throw at 70.22m, but Allman’s hot streak made her the Olympic favorite. Others in contention for the gold medal were Croatia’s Sandra Perkovic, the reigning two-time Olympic gold medalist and two-time World Athletics Championships gold medalist, Cuba's Yaime Perez, the 2019 World Athletics Championships winner, and Germany’s Kristin Pudenz.
“We talked about the goal for 2021 being in 70-meter shape at the Olympics,” Allman said. “Historically, if we could do that, we felt we were going to be in a position that we would feel proud of whatever the result was, and most likely that would be a gold medal. It was definitely strange feeling a bit as the favorite going into the Olympics. I was not prepared for the insane pressure cooker feeling that comes from being in that position.”
Van Klinken failed to make the Olympic final. Allman took the lead in the final when she threw 68.98m on her first throw to put the pressure on the field. With it raining throughout the competition after the first round, few throwers improved, and Allman’s opening toss held up as the winner. Pudenz was second at 66.86m, followed by Perez (65.72m) and Perkovic (65.01m).
“Winning the Olympic gold medal gives you the deepest sense of pride you could ever imagine, but it’s also the most chaotic experience of your life," Allman said. “I did not do any preparation for what happens once you win a medal, and I think that’s part of the reason that I did have success, is that all of our focus was spent on how do we prepare, how do we deal with the conditions, how are we going to focus on the logistics of being in an Olympic Village and dealing with COVID?”
“It was a shock the amount of media, the amount of interviews, the amount of people all over the world reaching out with congratulations. Getting back home, my family, just being so excited. My small town throwing a parade. It was like every corner, there was an insane energetic response to what had happened in Tokyo.”
Allman validated her Olympic win by closing the season strong. She won the Diamond League final in Zurich, Switzerland, to earn an automatic berth into World Athletics Championships Oregon22. Three days later she improved her American record to 71.16m in a meet in Berlin.
This season picked up where last year’s ended. In her second meet of the season on April 8, Allman launched a throw of 71.46m in the Triton Invitational in San Diego. That throw not only broke her American record again but is the longest throw in the world since 1992 and made Allman the No. 15 performer all time.
“Having that result early on was something that gave me a ton of confidence heading into this season,” Allman said. “I think in order to really be at your best in discus throwing, it’s a combination of strength, technique, and conditions. And in order to continue to push the boundaries, you really have to have all three aligned. So, I do think it is possible to keep throwing farther. That’s something that’s really motivating to me.”
Sion believes he and Allman are just scratching the surface of how far she can throw. Germany’s Gabriele Reinsch holds the world record of 76.80m from 1988. Most of the top 10 performers in history are athletes from the old Eastern Bloc nations, and a lot of those marks are viewed with skepticism over whether those throwers reached those distances cleanly.
In a lot of ways, Allman doesn’t fit the picture of a traditional discus thrower, standing 6 feet, 1 inch and weighing 170 pounds. Her long and lanky frame, combined with her athleticism gleaned from a youth background as a dancer has created, what Sion calls, a new form of discus thrower.
“Being fast, dynamic and explosive and long and reactive and elastic, those things are more important than being just big and strong is the reality," Sion said. “I think it took someone like her to continuously change this model and this concept in people’s brains. I think she can be huge in that way and if we want to continue to have success and continue to spread the word, show people what’s possible.
“I think she’s capable of throwing incredibly far. We’re finding that balance because also at the same time, anytime she’s competing internationally, the goal is to win. If you get too caught up in throwing super far it can be difficult to do.”
Finding that balance is also the key in avoiding getting carried away by the fame and glamour that comes with being an Olympic champion.
“I think my mindset is always about feeling like there’s so many things I could be doing better," Allman said. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t know what the heck I’m doing when I’m in the circle because we’re making changes, and I’m trying to do better, but it feels awkward at first when you’re starting to do that.
“But I think that’s what’s also led to the success, is being able to be comfortable being uncomfortable. I’m quite shocked that I have the title of the farthest throw in the last 30 years, but it’s incredible to be in the company of someone like Sandra (Perkovic), who has been pushing boundaries for the last decade.”
Now it’s Allman pushing those boundaries and nothing would be a better embodiment of that than becoming the first American to win a gold medal in the event at a World Athletics Championships, eight years after she made her international debut in the World U20 Championships at Hayward Field.
“I know it’s going to be one of the most incredible full-circle moments to have a World Junior Championship here in Eugene and now a World Championship,” Allman said. “It was really, really impactful to compete against the world, to have that intense environment and feel that sense of pride going into the ring and having it go well. I think that was incredibly rewarding as a young athlete to be able to feel that recognition and wanting to have the hope of potentially more accolades like that in the future.”
By Ashley Conklin