A PERFECT TIME to talk.
That’s what Reggie Jagers says. “For some reason my car is not working. I’m waiting for a tow truck. So I guess it would be a perfect time to talk.”
Indeed. We had some serious catching up to do with the world’s best left-handed discus thrower, who made the Tokyo Olympic team but then disappeared completely off the radar after struggling in ’22. Now he’s back at the top of the U.S. list with the longest lefty throw in world history, his 226-11 (69.16) at Ramona, Oklahoma, a few weeks ago. Wind or no, that, incidentally, was the longest American throw in the last 14 years, a piece of trivia that might be concerning for his competitors at the upcoming Olympic Trials.
The journey on which the Ohio native has been starts, for our purposes, with a torn pec muscle the year before the Olympics. “I had major pec surgery. I got a lot of calls and messages from support systems in the sport and family and they pretty much thought my time was over.”
It wasn’t. “I got back to elite-level throwing, made the Olympic team, competed really well in America, and didn’t do what I wanted to do at the Olympics. I felt like I had limited training, because the main goal was coming back from the pec surgery.”
He didn’t reveal his surgery until after he had made the team. “I just didn’t want to talk about it beforehand, and no one even knew I tore my pec because of how I competed that year. But, yeah, after the Olympics, it became apparent, like, ‘You need to fix your injuries.’”
Jagers, who won the USA title in ’18, also decided, if he wanted to return to the Olympics and redeem himself, that he had to find a coaching situation where he could grow.
“A lot of times I was coming up with my own training program, and I’m doing a lot of research. I’m learning from Ryan Crouser how he coaches himself but I haven’t done the sport as long as him, so I felt like I needed more guidance.”
During the ’22 season, new complications emerged from a hip surgery. “I trained for 6 weeks and I competed for 6 weeks.” He threw 203-11 (62.16) for 4th at USATF. He might have been able to compete at Worlds had he made the qualifying standard, but alas, 5th-placer Brian Williams got that spot instead. No matter. “I just kind of took that down time to just make my next…
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