The most dominant shot putter in history eyes a third straight ...

PARIS — The best shot putter in track and field’s history spent this spring and summer experiencing something unusual: vulnerability.

He spent Saturday night doing the utterly familiar — dominating his competition and making history in the process.

Despite battling elbow and pectoral injuries for much of 2024, 31-year-old American Ryan Crouser stepped into the Stade de France ring Saturday and was unchallenged from his very first throw en route to winning an unprecedented third consecutive Olympic gold medal at 75 feet, 1 3/4 inches. It made him not only shot put’s farthest thrower of all time — Crouser owns the world and Olympic records — but also indisputably its most dominant. 

The win broke the consecutive-gold tie he held with shot putters Ralph Rose (1904, 1908), Parry O’Brien (1952, 1956) and Tomasz Majewski (2008, 2012). The victory elevated Crouser to a rare level of control over a single event akin to Usain Bolt in the 100 and 200 meters and Carl Lewis in the long jump.

Crouser’s win also widened the gap between American success in the event and everyone else. In 30 Summer Olympics, Americans have now claimed gold 20 times.

The inevitability of his win was a stark contrast to the uncertainty of his season. Crouser injured the ulnar nerve in his throwing elbow. The next month, while bench pressing, he tore a pectoral muscle. Doctors didn’t clear him to resume throwing the 16-pound metal shot until almost June. By late July, in his final warmup before the Paris Olympics, the Oregon native was beaten for the first time in nearly a year.

“There were some challenges this spring,” Crouser said. “To say the least.”

His opening throw of 74 feet, 3 ½ inches would have been enough to win gold by itself. But Crouser wasn’t done. He threw 74-5 ½ on his second throw, and 75-1 ¾ on his third, as no one else could land a mark within three feet of his own. When rain began falling during the fourth round, turning the ring slick, it made the gap all the more difficult to overcome. Leonardo Fabbri, the Italian who defeated Crouser in July in London, lost his footing on his fourth attempt.

Fellow American Joe Kovacs became the first in Olympic history to earn three silver medals in the same individual event. 

The gold adds another line to a resume unlike any other. Crouser owns 11 of the 20 farthest marks of all time, all of which were thrown between 2021 and this season. Only four men have thrown past 75 feet, 5 1/2 inches (23 meters) — and Crouser has done it nine times. The three others have combined for five. It is not as though Crouser has won multiple Olympic and world championships while beating up on inferior competition, either. Throwers owning history’s second-, fifth- and seventh-best marks were in the Paris final. 

Crouser has maintained his hold on the event through a rare willingness to rethink a throwing technique that had already earned him gold in Rio and Tokyo. Self-coached, and with a background in engineering and a degree in finance, Crouser gets deeply analytical while practicing in his self-described “barn” near the University of Arkansas.

Fayetteville, Arkansas, is filled with professionals who often overlap at the Razorbacks’ track, but Crouser’s comfort tinkering alone and his stature within the sport create a deference even other world-class athletes acknowledge.

“I don’t really talk when I see him training because he’s the world record holder,” said triple jumper Jaydon Hibbert, a medal contender from Jamaica who competes collegiately for Arkansas. “I’m not going to bother the world record holder.”

In December 2023, two years after setting his first world record, Crouser believed he still wasn’t putting his full power into his throws and set out to engineer a solution that would turn the long arms and legs of his 6-foot-7 frame, which leaves little room in the ring, into an advantage. In what he has called a light bulb moment of physics, he shifted where he began his spin slightly to the right to give him room to include a faster, longer first step. This led to quicker rotation to put more speed behind the ball by the time it leaves his massive right hand.

Within five months, in May 2023, the technique dubbed by some the “Crouser slide” pushed his own world record an additional seven inches farther, to 77 feet, 3 ¾ inches, the first ever beyond 77 feet.

Within eight months of his technique change, he’d won his second consecutive world championship, despite discovering he had two blood clots in his left leg. It was the start of a series of health challenges that Crouser said stemmed from overcompensating after realizing he could not pull off the same workouts as when he was 26 or even 28.

“As a self-coached athlete, it has been a bit of difficulty recognizing that I am getting older,” he said.

It forced Crouser to think through his event while physically sidelined, which often involved a single training session followed by consecutive days off. His routine now involves plenty of massages and icing. This has not been his season. 

But it was still his gold medal.