Adam Nelson in qualification at the 2008 US Olympic Trials (© Getty Images)
QuestionWhat would constitute a shock result in the men’s Shot Put?
Answer - If someone from the USA squad didn’t win the gold!
Actually that answer is a tad cautious because if America did not take a sweep of the medals it would at the very least be described as surprising.
2005 World champion Adam Nelson (22.12), reigning World titleholder Reese Hoffa (22.10), and 2008 World Indoor champion Christian Cantwell (21.76) are the most consistent putters in the world.
Of the twenty-two 21m plus competition performances which have taken place this season, a staggering 15 have been supplied by this USA squad.
The Shot Put in the Olympic Games has been won by the USA on 17 of the 26 occasions it has been contested, though the last of their seven medal sweeps took place as long ago as Rome 1960!
Randy Barnes won in Atlanta 96 but since then the Finnish spinner Arsi Harju and the Ukrainian glider Yuriy Belonog have denied the USA, and more personally Adam Nelson, who was the runner-up on both occasions, the gold. In Athens 2004 it couldn’t have been tighter with the first two being tied on 21.16m and the gold only going to Belonog by virtue of a better second best put!
Who could upset the American domination?
Since their travel across ‘the pond’ after the Trials in Eugene, the US trio have come down to a more human level of 21m and even sometimes even 20m plus putting!
As the performances of the Americans have reached a plateau and then sunk beneath their usual global level, so during the same period one man from Belarussia has stepped into the ring to offer a serious challenge in the 22m zone.
2003 World champion Andrey Mikhnevich has hit a good seam of form since the beginning of July. Six consecutive season’s of 21m+ putting indicate his consistency but his 22m effort on home soil in Minsk on 27 July was a PB for the 32-year-old who came third behind Hoffa and Nelson at last summer’s World champs in Osaka. The distance placed him third on the season’s world list ahead of Cantwell, and backed up his 21.33m national champs win in Grodno on 8 July.
Yury Bialou (21.00) and Pavel Lyzhyn (20.88) complete a very formidable Belarussian squad for the Shot Put which begins and ends on the first day of competition (15 Aug).
What of the form of the two other medallists from Athens?
Olympic champion Bilonog is way off form with a no mark in the national champs and season’s best of only 20.41m, while bronze medallist Joachim Olsen of Denmark has only competed once since his no mark in the World Championships final last summer. His 19.62 in Halle, Germany on 24 May is not going to set the world on fire!
The two Scott’s, Jamaica’s Dorian Scott (21.45m) and Scott Martin of Australia (21.26) hold fifth and six places respectively in the yearly list but both produced their best heaves very early in 2008 and have shown no similar form of late.
The other two men who have been over 21m this year and are competing in Beijing, Germany’s Peter Sack (21.19) and Ivan Yushkov of Russia (21.01) were at their best form a little more recently but even here we are talking about May.
Rather it is in Poland’s Tomasz Majewski (20.97) and Dutchman Rutger Smith (20.80) that we are more likely to find a surprise medallist. Smith finished fourth and Majewski fifth in the Osaka final, and the latter at the London Grand Prix (25 July) very nearly caught the Americans on the hop with his season’s best which gave him third.
Chris Turner for the IAAF
