Olympic Champion Returns To Meet Where He Broke The High School Record And Thrills Crowd With An Unexpected World Record
By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor
POCATELLO, Idaho — What better way to resurrect a once-proud track meet shelved for the past two years due to concerns around COVID-19 than to jolt it back to life with a world record.
Yet who could even imagine such a thing, especially since it’s a big high school meet serving a wide swath of the intermountain U.S.
Enter Ryan Crouser.
The two-Olympic champion was invited to come back to the Simplot Games by his cousin, Haley Crouser, who has become one of the newest members of the event’s board or directors.
Ryan Crouser has history at Simplot. Twelve years ago, he came to the meet looking for an opportunity to test himself as a high school senior and he smashed the national high school record.
After a few days of fly-fishing along icy riverbanks, Crouser played the part of special guest and attended various meet functions, greeted sponsors and signed autographs, and worked out the details of an exhibition competition against five members of the Idaho State track team so that his throws would count.
Just in case.
Minutes after the meet’s opening ceremony and national anthem, Crouser went into the ring and took what he calls a “static throw.” Meaning no frills. Just a basic throw to get the series going.
His warm-ups were pounding the ISU artificial turf near a taped line that designated his world record distance of 23.37 meters.
Then his first attempt static throw sailed 23.38 meters.
Even though there was buzz around the meet of going for a world record, Crouser entered the ring feeling like anything over 22 meters would be acceptable.
“It really surprised me,” he said. “I did a speech, just yesterday, about the two kinds of world records. There’s the surprise and there’s the finally. There’s the one where you do it and you’re the most surprised person and there’s the finally world record, you do it and say finally. Because when I first threw the 23.37 outdoors, that was a finally. I’d had five or six meets where I would have bet the house I was going to break the world record and I didn’t. I got a little bit tight.”
An extra day of rest, a welcoming crowd, positive vibes, whatever it was, Crouser managed to uncork the biggest throw in history in the same Simplot Games sector where her broke the high school record in 2011.
After the first throw,…
CLICK HERE to Read the Full Original Article at RunnerSpace News…