Budapest 23 x Throws Preview: Men's Shot Put
By Kara Winger
Four-time Olympian, nine-time U.S. national champion, and 2022 Diamond League Final winner Kara Winger provides us with her insight ahead of the throwing competition at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest, Hungary. Who will be crowned this year’s world champions? Follow along all week for Kara’s previews before tuning in to watch the meet on NBC and Peacock (which will also have some additional streams of field event finals).
Men’s Shot Put
Ryan Crouser won his sixth U.S. national title in the men’s shot put at the 2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships at Hayward Field. He returns to the 2023 World Athletics Championships as the reigning world champion. Photo by Howard Lao
Qualification Round: Saturday, 8/19 | 1:30am PT
Final Round: Saturday, 8/19 | 11:37am PT
Starting off with an absolute bang – the men’s shot put is going to be WILD.
The U.S. men have four entrants: Not only has he been in world record form all of 2023 but Ryan Crouser’s status as defending world champion got him a wild card to this year’s meet. If that hadn’t happened, returning silver medalist Joe Kovacs’ first career 23m toss (23.23m) to win the Diamond League Final at Zurich 2022 would have also earned a bye. Josh Awotunde, Eugene 2022 world bronze medalist (the U.S. men swept the event for the first time ever last year,) made his way onto this team again with 22.10m at the 2023 Toyota USATF Outdoor Championships. Payton Otterdahl broke the 22m barrier for the first time with his third place finish of 22.09m at the same meet to punch his ticket to Budapest.
Ryan is in a mind-blowing class of his own and he continues to make his dominance FUN to watch. He owns eight of the ten farthest results in the world this year, broke his own world record by nearly 20cm, and has made it clear that he has not yet reached his potential. But a man who has one more outdoor world title than Crouser is Kovacs. The second best shot-putter of all-time has not finished lower than second at a global championship since his outdoor Worlds debut in 2015. Awotunde earned bronze last year in his first-ever outdoor World Championships with a PB of 22.29m after throwing a 22.00m in 2021. Otterdahl’s 22.09m toss at the 2023 U.S. national championship meet did not remain his PB for long as a successful European stint in July got him out to 22.11m. Additionally, the Tokyo Olympian has experience on the global stage like the rest of his compatriots.
To say this U.S quartet is formidable would be an absurd understatement.
Tom Walsh will be mad I started with the Americans, though. The guy who started the fireworks of the best shot put competition (yes, still!) of all-time at the Doha World Championships in 2019 is almost as consistent on the global stage as Kovacs. His second place mark at the London Diamond League this year of 22.58m has him sitting third on the world list, and as his most recent outing, must be good vibes heading into the World Championships. Fellow New Zealander Jacko Gill has made the finals of the last six global championships, and after a long road from prep phenom to now, his 22.12m PB in March places him firmly in that very elite class of men’s shot-putters.
There are seven more men on the Budapest start list with personal bests beyond 22-meters, and two of them first achieved the feat this season: Italian Zane Weir, fifth place finisher in Tokyo, and Rajindra Campbell, who has broken the Jamaican national record three times and counting in 2023, improving his lifetime best by (so far) well over 1.5m on the year.
Notable championship performers and staples on the international scene are Czech athlete Tomas Stanek, consistent finalist and Nigerian national record holder Chuk Enekwechi, Brazilian giant and indoor World Champion Darlan Romani, and Croatian Filip Mihaljevic. Leonardo Fabbri, another Italian, is also in great form. He won the Firenze Diamond League in front of a home crowd and started off a consistent season that has him in great shape to not only make the Worlds final, but The Prefontaine Classic, too.
What happens when the two (okay, three) best athletes (Crouser, Kovacs, and Walsh) of all-time in an event have competed against each other for years at the top of their game? The rest of the field rises to meet them, and while American men’s shot put has always been a force in track and field, the world has really shown up this season in the circle with the toe board, and I can’t wait to see how global pressure elevate their performances even more.
What a way to start the throws action at the World Athletics Championships! Top 12 from the morning qualification round make the final – and those qualifying round pressures sure make diamonds out of some athletes.
If you’re home in the U.S., check out the qualifying results when you wake up, then catch the final over a leisurely lunch: Start time in Budapest is 8:35pm Saturday, which is 11:35am PT / 2:35pm ET. Ryan might be a force, but he’s not unbeatable, and there is plenty of talent hot on his heels!