This is Cathal Dennehy’s first piece for RunBlogRun during the 2023 World Championships. Cathal is one of the finest writers in our sport and has been part of the track & field scene for many years now. Enjoy his observations on Ryan Crouser, newly crowned WC in Men’s shot put.
This was surely the best one of all. Ryan Crouser has thrown farther than this. He’s thrown under more pressure than this. But of all the achievements racked up in the 30-year-old’s career – from world youth champion in 2009 to world senior champion in 2022, with two Olympic golds along the way – this was surely his finest effort.
The records will show that the behemoth from Oregon won the world title by an astonishing 117cm, his winning throw of 23.51m sitting behind only his world record of 23.56m on the all-time list. But it was the context to it that made this better than that LA day back in May, when he broke the world record, better than Rio in 2016, Tokyo in 2021, and Oregon in 2022.
Four weeks ago, Crouser threw 23.07m to win at the London Diamond League but contracted an illness on the journey home. “I lost my sense of smell, so it was probably Covid,” he said tonight. A training session that followed in 104-degree heat likely didn’t help matters, nor did the long-haul flight back. Any of those three factors could have led to what happened next – Crouser still doesn’t know the cause – but whatever the underlying reason, he woke up one day with blood clots in his lower leg.
At the time, he thought it was a calf strain, and it was diagnosed as such. “It didn’t present with the typical symptoms (of a blood clot) – no redness, swelling, heat, or throbbing. After 10 days of being relatively unresponsive to any treatment, my PT was like, ‘I don’t like the way this looks; it’s not sitting right with me.’”
Before he traveled to Europe, he underwent a Doppler ultrasound scan, which showed “two distal blood clots” in his lower leg. Crouser’s thoughts turned immediately to Budapest. “Since then, it’s been a matter of: can I still do world champs? Can I mitigate the risks and travel safely to and from Budapest?”
Throwing was painful, so he couldn’t really train, but the bigger risk was likely from long-haul travel….
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