Shot superstar Ryan Crouser’s boggling 76-8½ (23.38) throw back in February at a specially organized comp during the annual Simplot HS Games was met with celebration from World Athletics.
His first-attempt launch a centimeter longer than the World and Olympic champion’s WR set in ’21 shocked even Crouser, whose goal had been to surpass his 74-10½ (22.82) indoor standard.
WA headlined its same-day web report, “Crouser breaks world shot put record with 23.38m in Idaho.” Under that banner ran a story with quotes from the man who had just blasted the 16-pound ball past all previous puts. The first paragraph, as is standard practice, included the standard asterisk as caveat: “*Subject to the usual ratification procedure.”
Subsequently, T&FN has confirmed through a USATF official, the temporary ring and landing area set up in Idaho State’s Holt Arena was found through a WA-required site survey to be unacceptable for WR consideration.
The surveyor’s report identified two deficiencies, stating, “The diameter of the circle does not comply with the rules” and “The downward inclination in the putting direction does not comply with the rules.”
A WA official wrote in an e-mail to USATF, “Unfortunately, given the fact that the SP site was NOT in compliance with World Athletics Rules we are not in a position to recognize the performance as a new World Record. Additionally, we will not ratify the results of the Shot Put held at this competition.”
Crouser learned of the decision on April 01, not in a courtesy call or e-mail from WA or USATF but via the social media grapevine. The gist as he recalls it: “Ryan Crouser’s indoor World Record has been taken down under an IRM tag.”
“Shoot,” he remembers thinking as he Googled, “what does World Athletics’ IRM mean?” It was April 1st. It was like, oh, ‘This is a terrible April Fools. Stop it guys.’”
IRM, as Crouser learned, stands for “irregular measurement.” He next learned nobody was pulling his leg “cuz I went and looked at my World Athletics page and saw [‘IRM’ appended to the mark], but yeah, all of social media thought it was just like a really bad April Fools’ joke.”
His massive heave had vanished into thin air. Crouser’s energy is primarily focused on throwing farther yet and he’ll have an opportunity to take an indoor whack at…
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