Ryan Crouser is the best shot putter in the history of track and field. He's also a nerd.
EUGENE, Oregon — Ryan Crouser, the top shot putter in the world, the best athlete in the history of his event, a 6-foot-7, 317-pound man who can heave a 16-pound metal ball a whopping 76 feet, 8.25 inches, admits to some unconventional self-improvement methods.
Many athletes get better by studying their specific sport. But Crouser, who is favored to win the shot put gold Sunday at the track and field world championships after finishing first in qualifying with a throw of 75 feet, 10 1/4 inches, prefers to look elsewhere.
He analyzes the world’s best jiu jitsu athletes to better understand continuous momentum, examines how top golfers use “elastic movement” with their hips to get power on their long drives, and once told his family he thought long jump training exercises could positively impact his movement at the front of the shot put ring. He scours the internet for sports performance tips, obsessed with researching anything that could give him even the slightest edge, a small tweak that could help him throw “a fraction of a percentage” farther.
He is, in other words, a nerd. And it’s a label he wears proudly.
“It’s really easy in track and field to get hyper-focused on your one event and just keep digging deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole,” Crouser says. “But I feel like a lot of breakthroughs, for me, have come when I’ve taken inspiration from other places.
“To me, it would be so much more interesting to watch LeBron James practice the week before the NBA Finals than to watch him score 50 points in a game.”
His method works. Crouser is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and owns 25 of the 50 top throws all time, a nod to both his astonishing consistency and longevity.
“He is absolutely a student of his event,” says Mitch Crouser, Ryan’s dad and coach.
Perhaps even more startling is that at 29, Ryan is likely just entering his peak. Already the undisputed best shot putter in history, the only thing missing from Crouser’s resume is a world championship. It’s become a bit of a joke with other throwers ribbing him about his lack of a world title. He plans to fix that this weekend in his home state.
He has some lofty career goals, including throwing the shot 78 feet, 8 7/8 inches — that would be more than a two-foot improvement on his personal best, a jump virtually unheard of for someone who’s battling just to get fractions of inches better.
It’s the equivalent, Mitch says, of a sprinter saying they want to run the 100 meters in 8 seconds, an eye-popping and seemingly impossible time. But at this level, “you have to be crazy like that,” Mitch says.
Ryan is committed to shot put through the 2024 Paris Olympics. Then he plans to switch to discus full-time. Ambitious? Absolutely. But given his history of nerding out to improve his marks, he’ll probably be successful.
Plus, it runs in the family.
'He's taken it to a different level'
Crouser remembers vividly the first time he threw a shot put. It was sixth grade and he was in his grandfather’s backyard in Boring, Oregon, a rural community about 30 minutes east of Portland. Larry Crouser had “a pile of sand” that he could level and turn into a makeshift shot put pit. Ryan was instantly hooked. For almost two decades, whenever he found himself in a slump, Ryan returned to that backyard as Larry gently but firmly encouraged his grandson to focus on the basics.
Given his family’s history, it was inevitable that Ryan would, at some point, try track. Larry threw wooden javelins and competed while serving in the Korean War in the 1950s. Larry and his wife Marie had three boys, and each of them racked up their own track accolades. Mitch, the oldest, threw discus and was an alternate for the 1984 Olympic team. Dean, the middle, was an NCAA champion in the shot and discus. Brian was a two-time Olympian in the javelin.
The next generation was plenty accomplished, too. Along with Ryan, there’s oldest cousin Sam (2016 Olympic javelin thrower) and Sam’s younger sister Haley (a javelin thrower who finished fourth in the 2011 World U18 championships).
The Crousers are considered track and field royalty, especially in their home state of Oregon, a region that loves the sport so much, Eugene is nicknamed TrackTown, USA. Ryan, Sam and Haley all won individual high school state championships at the old Hayward Field, which underwent a $270 million renovation last year in order to hold the world championships in the U.S. for the first time.
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With the Crouser clan, everything becomes a heated competition, from pickup basketball games (“just tons of trash talk,” Ryan says) to golf chip shot tournaments (“his game needs a lot of work, if you put a video of it on Youtube he’d get killed,” Sam says). Uncle Brian is widely recognized as the most competitive Crouser and definitely the worst loser of the bunch.
“It’s, um, a bit excessive,” Sam admits sheepishly. “When we all get together and play ping pong or something, everyone’s sweating. It’s like, do we really need to play this hard all the time?”
Having family that understands both your sport and the training it takes to reach an elite level is a unique situation, Ryan says. They share in his success, and commiserate with the tough times. But for all the hours spent in track and field stadiums across the world, the family’s favorite pastime is actually fishing and camping trips.
“The funny thing with Ryan is, he loves throwing, but if he could be a pro bass fisherman, he’d probably rather do that,” says Sam, who grudgingly admits that in a family full of world-class competitors, Ryan is probably the best fisherman. “He’s the most normal guy. Sometimes we’re hanging out, fishing and it’s like dang, this is a two-time gold medalist! You’d never know it.”
Ryan’s nerdy about fishing, too. Years ago during the high school state championships, he couldn’t find a pole, so he got creative, using a stick, athletic tape and safety pins from his competition bib for hooks. Small pieces of a protein bar served as bait. For this weekend’s Eugene trip, he brought all his gear.
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At the 2019 world championships in Doha, the capital of Qatar, he killed time in his hotel room tying fishing flies. He loves to tinker with different patterns and designs. Given the joy he finds in learning, it should come as no surprise that he was his high school’s valedictorian.
Ryan’s cerebral nature separates him from other elite competitors — and it makes his resume that much more notable, because the key to big throws is turning off your brain.
“You look at Olympic throwers and they’re just the biggest, strongest guys you’ll ever see,” Sam says. “And it’s counter intuitive, but you can’t just go out and try to throw as hard as you can, because you’re probably going to foul. He’s so good at staying in his own head, but not too much.”
When training for field events like shot put, it’s nearly impossible to recreate a meet-like atmosphere and adrenaline. That’s part of what makes Crouser’s sustained success so impressive.
“He shines brightest when the lights are the strongest,” Mitch says. “That is really, really hard to do.”
“Our family, we were all pretty good at throwing,” Sam says. “But he’s taken it to a different level. He’s just exceptional.”
Driven to win for grandpa
For as much success as he’s enjoyed with his family, Ryan has known heartache, too.
A couple months before the 2016 Rio Olympics, his maternal grandfather, Bill Klapwyk, died. And then, in a cruel pattern of repetition, Larry died the week before Ryan left for Tokyo last summer.
Though he was 87 and had battled cancer for the last dozen years, Larry was still actively involved in Ryan’s career. Ryan’s home base is in Arkansas, while his parents remain in Oregon. Every day, Ryan uses a drone to film his workouts, then sends the video to Mitch, who analyzes it and provides feedback. Usually, Larry would watch with Mitch and add his own coaching tips. After Ryan broke the world record at the 2021 Trials in Eugene, a throw he’d been chasing for years, Larry took a picture holding up a newspaper cover touting Ryan’s accomplishment and giving the camera a thumbs up.
“It’s amazing that he lived as long as he did,” Mitch says. “I really think Ryan chasing the world record is what kept him going.”
Driven to honor Larry’s contribution to his success, an emotional Ryan held up a handwritten sign that read “GRANDPA, WE DID IT” after defending his gold in Tokyo.
Were he still alive, Larry would likely be delighted by Ryan’s next challenge. The plan had always been to switch to discus on an off year — Ryan initially threw both events in college at Texas, but dropped discus because they were detrimental to each other from a technical standpoint — but COVID delayed the move. Now, because of back-to-back world championships, this year in Eugene and next year in Budapest, Ryan will wait to throw discus until after the Paris Games.
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He’s intrigued by a new test and eager to do something more suited for his 6-foot-7 frame. It’s hard for Ryan to maintain his current weight, but throwing discus will allow him to drop to 300 pounds. His 6-foot-10 wingspan should come in handy, too.
Regardless of which event he’s focused on, he’s not sure how much longer he’ll compete. Though other elite athletes have found success into their early 40s, Ryan doesn’t see that path for himself. Someone like Tom Brady, Ryan explains, can rejigger his game and improve other skills to stay relevant, but likely can’t throw as far as he could when he was 29, and certainly he can’t run as fast of a 40-yard dash. Track and field events, on the other hand, are measured purely on performance.
“How do you motivate yourself and be as dedicated knowing you probably won’t ever PR again?” he wonders.
There are other potential opportunities. He’s interested in other sports — basketball was his first love, and his high school hoops coach says he absolutely would have been a Division-I basketball player. He’s confident he could put up eye-popping numbers at the NFL Combine. He doesn’t know what comes after track, though he’s so invested in sports performance, he thinks that could be the next chapter. But wherever he goes and whatever he chooses to pursue, he’ll be sure to nerd out and study up.
So far, that approach has worked pretty well.
Follow Lindsay Schnell on Twitter at @Lindsay_Schnell
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Track and field world championships: Ryan Crouser seeks shot put gold
