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With the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (in 2021) just over a month away, the past couple weeks have featured the United States’ best competing in Olympic Trials for the chance to earn a spot on the team for Tokyo in various events. Gymnastics trials saw Simone Biles do what Simone Biles does, as has swimming where Katie Ledecky is still lapping the field as a distance swimmer.
On Friday, the track and field trials continued in Oregon where some of the field events had their finals, namely shot put where America’s strongest, beefy gentlemen battled it out to see who could huck that heavy ball the farthest. The winner of the event was Ryan Crouser, which came as little surprise as he was the favorite coming in as the gold medalist at the 2016 Rio Olympics, but his final throw of the evening stunned everyone as he broke the shot put world record that had stood for over 30 years by a whopping eight inches.
WORLD RECORD. BY EIGHT INCHES.@RCrouserThrows didn’t just set the world record in the shot put, he OBLITERATED IT.@usatf | #TrackFieldTrials21 x #TokyoOlympics pic.twitter.com/P3SaKwouIP
— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) June 19, 2021
In a sport where fractions of an inch can separate winners and losers in an event, beating a world record by eight full inches is pretty outrageous. As soon as he let it go he knew he had a good throw and the announcers were in absolute awe of what they’d seen, noting he almost threw it clean out of the pit, knowing he had just smashed the record and were just awaiting official word. Shouts to Crouser who will head to Tokyo as the favorite to win back-to-back golds, and now has himself a world record throw to boot — which figures to be very hard to break given how long the previous record stood.
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