ONE MAGIC MOMENT led to another: Brooke Andersen, in the lead of the World Championships hammer, watched as Canadian Camryn Rogers, then in 2nd, took her final throw. But the leader couldn’t be sure: “I saw where it landed. I didn’t think it was further than mine, but you can’t really tell. You couldn’t really see the line from where we were.”
Then the measure flashed on the board, and she knew that no matter what she did on her final try, she would be atop the highest step of the podium. “All my emotions hit at once,” she says. “I wanted to start crying, but I couldn’t, because I had one more throw. I just knew that I wanted to try to throw as far as I could. I believed that I was still in 80m [262-5] shape. I just had to trust it. It was either going to go far or it was going to go in the net, and I was fine either way.”
She whirled, she threw, and the ball and wire soared farther than any other throw on the day, landing at 259-1 [78.96]. It was the second-farthest throw of her life, just 6cm short of the PR 259-3 (79.02) she hit in Tucson in April.
“That was literally the best moment,” recounts the Northern Arizona alum, who turned 27 five weeks later. “It replays in my mind all the time. It’s not even about just the throw itself. It’s about the atmosphere: the fans and the standing ovation I got from the fans in that stadium. Winning my first international gold medal, it was amazing. It’s a moment that lives in my head all of the time.”
Andersen’s ascendance to the top of the hammer aristocracy marks a rather remarkable year. Last August, after reaching the third-best mark in Olympic qualifying, she only managed 10th in the final. It didn’t help that she was still feeling the effects of a shoulder injury she had incurred that spring.
“The sport is full of heartbreaks,” she admits.
Turning that around became her biggest project over the last year. “The biggest thing was correcting the little things with my technique. Getting stronger always has been a goal as well. And also staying healthy.”
Her ’21 shoulder injury was just pure bad luck, the result of a fall. She explains, “I hit my head on the ground and it made my shoulder act up. I have a disc in my neck that’s a little bit smaller than the other. It caused a nerve to act up super…
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