FROM THE GET-GO, Canada’s Ethan Katzberg made it clear that everyone else was fighting for silver. He boomed his first throw out to 276-0 (84.12) and it was over. No one else would top 80 meters, although Hungary’s Bence Halász came close at 262-4 (79.97).
“Our plan was to get a good one out in the first round,” said Katzberg, who didn’t hit his surprise winner at last year’s World Champs until round 5. “For it to be 84 meters felt really good. Definitely released some of the nerves.”
Still, Katzberg wasn’t resting easy. Gold may have seemed inevitable to everyone else, but he said, “I didn’t want to assume and so I wanted to stay focused in the competition. I still tried to go for it, and get a little more out.”
Thus, Katzberg put an exclamation point on his dominance by landing a legal 269-11 (82.28) in round 3. In the fifth frame, he hit the 80-meter tape, and intentionally fouled it. Then he dropped his sixth throw around 82 or 83, falling out of the ring and coming up laughing.
In another bright moment for Ukraine on the night Yaroslava Mahuchikh won high jump gold, Mykhaylo Kokhan took bronze at 260-5 (79.39). American Rudy Winkler placed 8th at 255-8 (77.92).
The 22-year-old Katzberg is now the youngest man to ever be a world and Olympic hammer champion. He is Canada’s first gold-medal thrower since Étienne Desmarteau won the 56lb weight throw at St. Louis 1904.
Katzberg said his father is “coach number one. He learned everything he could about the hammer throw to coach my sister and I, and honestly, his development side of things was really incredible for just a dad kind of wanting to help his kid.”
Said current coach Dylan Armstrong, shot bronze medalist for Canada in 2008, “I told Ethan, he’s in the best shape of his life, so he knows that he can throw that far. I told him to try and take control right away, so that everyone maybe tense[s] up a little bit. I think they did. He’s very disciplined. He’s regimented and just follows everything I say. I’m fortunate enough to have a lot of these experiences where I can pass it along to him and so he can excel.”
Halász, twice a bronze medalist at World Championships (2019 & ’23), was happy to trade up to silver. “I knew I could do it,” he said. “And today is my [27th] birthday, so I made it a very special one. I just…
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