Reigning World champion Andersen surpasses 2019 facility record achieved by Price with final throw of 258-2 (78.69m); Winkler celebrates engagement with victory
By David Woods for DyeStat
Photo by Ava Kitzi
DES MOINES, Iowa – Fiction must be believable to be published. There are no such limits on non-fiction.
So don’t close the book on Brooke Andersen, whose evolution as a hammer thrower sounds make-believe: soccer player to world champion . . . in the hammer throw.
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Andersen said she does not reflect on it except for messages popping up on her phone now and then.
“Remember back on this day, like, college six years ago,” she said. “I feel like it was a long time ago.”
She beat an international field to win the elite invitational hammer Thursday at the 113th Drake Relays. On her final attempt, Andersen threw 258 feet, 2 inches (78.69m), breaking the Drake Stadium record of 256-8 (78.24m) set in 2019 by another world champion, DeAnna Price.
Andersen nearly equaled her world-leading PB of 261-10 (79.80m) from a week ago at Charlottesville, Va. (Price and three-time Olympic champion Anita Wlodarczyk are the only 80-foot throwers of all time.)
An abridged version of Andersen’s story:
The soccer player was persuaded to try discus and shot put at Rancho Buena Vista CA, and was an Avocado West League discus champion. Seriously, the Avocado League. Northern Arizona offered a $1,000 partial scholarship and put Andersen on a weightlifting program. She twice finished second in the NCAA Championships, and kept a post-collegiate career going by working at Chipotle and a GNC nutrition store. She made the world team in 2019 (finishing 20th in Doha), and then all the way to the top of the podium three years later.
Now sponsored by Nike, she has improved 102 feet since picking up a hammer a decade ago.
Supervising Andersen’s ascension has been coach Nathan Ott. He has been at Northern Arizona, Kansas State, Grand Canyon and now Penn State, where Andersen is a volunteer assistant.
“This win validates all the belief and trust in herself as well as in me and the training plan,” Ott said at last year’s World Championships in Eugene, Ore.
Two days after her triumph, Andersen donated her singlet and bib for inclusion in the Museum of World Athletics.
Andersen, 27, said it has been a blessing to have Ott as a coach and to be in the sport this long. Her growing weight-room numbers give her…
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