Dylan Armstrong heaves a shot in the rain at the Aviva Birmingham Grand Prix – Samsung Diamond League (© Mark Shearman)
World leader Dylan Armstrong has enjoyed a record breaking year but may well have to get very close to the National record and World lead of 22.21m which saw him crowned Canada's Shot Put champion for a sixth time towards the end of June if he is to win his country's first ever medal in the discipline.
The 30-year-old former hammer thrower, the event in which he contested his first World Championships on home soil in Edmonton 10 years ago - failing to qualify for the final - has undoubtedly been the most dominant performer on the Samsung Diamond League circuit this summer.
Victories in Doha, Rome and Birmingham has seen him take on and defeat the big guys of the 16lb shot, the American trio of Christian Cantwell, Rees Hoffa and Adam Nelson along with Poland's reigning Olympic gold medallist Tomasz Majewski plus the 2007 World bronze medallist Andrei Mikhnevich of Belarus.
Significantly his only SDL reversal came at the hands of Hoffa when he and Cantwell, the 2007 Osaka and 2009 Berlin World champions, respectively, beat him at the Herculis meet in Monaco which was the last competition in the event until the tour resumes its schedule in Zurich on 8 September after completion of the action in Daegu.
Away from the global international track and field tour meets, Armstrong's other defeats have seen surrender to Hoffa on two other occasions, in Hengelo and Eugene, while Cantwell came up trumps when winning at the street confrontation in Stockholm on 28 July.
The question now is whether Armstrong, who was ninth in Osaka and did not qualify for the final in Berlin, may now be vulnerable, particularly given the US stars are now less pressured having guaranteed their Team USA places in the National Trials at the end of June.
While Hoffa and Cantwell have travelled Europe extensively, Nelson the 2007 World champion, has restricted himself to just three meets on the continent and his sixth, fifth and sixth positions in Rome, Hengelo and Birmingham weren't exactly vintage displays from the two-time Olympic silver medallist.
But Nelson, a little on the short side for a shot putter but very fast in the circle, got it right when it mattered most when claiming a fifth US title - and his first since 2006 - to stifle the ambitions of Cantwell, Hoffa and US indoor champion Ryan Whiting.
Adding even more flavour to the victory was the fact his winning effort of 22.09m was his furthest distance for three years and ranks the 36-year-old "Daddy" of his country's throwing elite in the world lists behind Armstrong and European champion Mikhnevich.
They remain the only three to breach the 22 metres barrier this year while Cantwell's best came at the Nationals' with an effort of 21.87m, exactly the same distance Hoffa threw with his victory in Hengelo at the end of May, while the bulky but "Baby" 24-year-old Whiting reached out to 21.76m when third behind Cantwell and Majewski in Lausanne.
Majewski, runner up two years ago in Berlin, has surprisingly never thrown over 22 metres and Daegu would be the perfect occasion for the Pole, whose best ever is 21.95m, to join what is still a fairly exclusive club although the blue ribbon period for the shot occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Last year he was defeated for the European title by Mikhnevich and the Belarusian showed he is again in mint condition at the right time when moving to second spot on the global list with a huge throw of 22.10m in Minsk as recently as 11 August.
It was a lifetime furthest by a centimetre on his previous best which he he also set in his home city a year ago. Now the big question is can he and Majewski fetch to an end the USA's supremacy at the global meet since those Championships in Paris.
Let's remember it's not an impossibility. The last three Olympic Games have seen Finn Arsi Harju in Sydney followed in Athens by Ukraine's Yuriy Bilonog and then in Beijing Majewski, tame the dominant American pack.
David Martin for the IAAF
