Tom Walsh just finished up the best year of his career with a second placed finish at the Continental Cup. It’s a funky old comp that one, with athletes representing different areas of the world and overall points tallies being kept… don’t think too hard about it. Walshy threw 21.43m, well below his best, to leave Brazilian Darlan Romani with maximum points. Tom only actually threw the third best distance but they split the format a bit, the top thrower for each region after three rounds going into the semis - meaning that Ryan Crouser missed out despite throwing further than everyone other than his teammate Romani. Again, it was a weird one. Mostly just an exhibition thing to close out the season.

And what a season it was for Tom Walsh! It began with a run of meets back in Aotearoa, Walshy winning every one of them (even when he had Olympic rivals in town), then he bagged a couple wins in Australia too. A few competitive meetings in America then all the European stuff. All in all he competed in 23 major meetings and he placed first in 16 of them and second in 5 others. True to his growing reputation, he peaked for the big ones too. This year Tom Walsh claimed Commonwealth Gold over on the Gold Coast, took out gold in the World Indoor Champs to defend his title, and regained the Diamond League trophy he first won in 2016. This is what Tom Walsh does.

Along the way he added half a metre to his personal best. He went over 22 metres a bunch of times but it was his 22.67m effort in Auckland back at the start of the year which has ended up leading the entire world for the year of 2018. Ryan Crouser’s 14 centimetres back on that and Darrell Hill’s 27cm back. Good reason for that too, Walsh’s throw is ranked tied-ninth furthest in the history of the sport and you have to go back to 1990 – before he was even born – to find somebody who’s thrown further. Tom Walsh has three of the four longest throws of 2018.

This is all common knowledge though. We’re well aware in this country that Tom Walsh is dominating the sport, he’s won more than enough gold in the last three years to hammer that point home like he was hammering nails back in Timaru at the day job. Nah, but what you might not realise is that Tom Walsh is doing this in the most competitive era that shot put has ever seen. He’s not picking on plebs here. He’s beating guys who are hitting distances which would win most Olympic medals going back through the years.

Put it this way: it was in May 1975 that Brian Oldfield of the USA first broke the 22.00m mark. It didn’t get accepted as a world record because of his professional status, athletics were strange back in the day, but shout out to that guy anyway. Then the current world record was set by Randy Barnes in 1990 to cap an era in the late-80s that’s probably the one most people would point to if they wanted to argue this article. And they’re more than welcome to argue the point, except that a) those guys were all ‘roided up in the 80s and b) there weren’t the same number of guys all capable of winning any event on any given day and c) refer back to point a.

We’ll skip the indoor stats or else we’ll be here all night but across all official outdoor competitions there have now been 28 men to have thrown in excess of 22 metres, Darlan Romani being the most recent. Eight of them set their personal best between 1985 and 1990. Meanwhile eight more set their personal bests within the last five years and Ryan Whiting only misses out on making it nine by a few months. Seven of eight the Diamond League finalists in 2018 had thrown past 22 metres at some point in their career and the eighth one (Romani) did so for the first time a couple weeks later.

28 men have thrown 22.00m or further and those 28 men have combined to do so 156 times. Tom Walsh has 13 of those throws. Ryan Crouser has 22 of them. Each of them has done all that damage in the past three years. Everybody else we’re talking about entire careers so let’s chuck that into some historical context, shall we?

MOST CAREER THROWS 22M OR MORE (Men, Outdoor):

Ryan Crouser – 22
Christian Cantwell – 16
Ulf Timmerman – 15
Tom Walsh – 13
Udo Beyer – 11
Werner Günthör – 11
Joe Kovacs – 10
Randy Barnes – 9
Adam Nelson – 7
Reece Hoffa – 6

During the entire decade of the 1990s there may have been a world record set but there were only seven total throws beyond 22 metres. This year alone there were 18 from five different dudes. From the 1970s stretching back to the beginning of recorded time there were five throws to break that barrier. Then all of a sudden there was a surge in the mid to late 80s leading up to Randy Barnes’ world record and then, bang, massive drought for the next ten years. The likes of Christian Cantwell and Adam Nelson helped get things back up there but it’s only now that we’re seeing such repeated excellence again and this time they have a little thing called drug testing which has taken some prominence to legitimise the numbers. And see how long it took after that purge to get the sport back up to where once was.

Throws Beyond 22m (Number of Throwers)

Pre-1980: 5 (3)
1981-1985: 12 (6)
1986-1990: 47 (8)
1991-1995: 2 (2)
1996-2000: 3 (3)
2001-2005: 9 (4)
2006-2010: 18 (4)
2011-2015: 14 (7)
2016-Now: 46 (7)

18 throws of 22 metres or more this year, 18 throws of 22 metres or more last year and 10 throws of 22 metres or more in 2016. 46 all up across a three year span. There were only 46 throws of 22 metres or more in the previous 25 years combined. Read that last sentence again so the magnitude of that fact doesn’t wash over you too quickly. This is only over a three year period too, even in the golden age of 1986-88 there were only 40 combined throws of such a distance. Safe to say that no other three year period comes even close.

And the volume of different throwers too. 1986 and 1987 are the only other two years in which five shot putters have surpasses 22 metres in a calendar year (there were six in 1986). The distances were greater in those days, Timmerman and Barnes both going beyond 23 metres in the following years (the only two to achieve that feat), Timmy in 1988 and Barnesy in 1990, but each has also had extremely significant links to PED usage. Barnes got a lifetime ban for testing positive in 1998 (his second ban) while Timmermann’s place as a leading athlete in the East German regime of his days is dodgy to say the least. His name has come up in reports before, you know what that means.

But take a peek at the seven men to have cleared 22 metres since the first dawn of 2016 and you’re not only looking at a list of the best current shot putters on the planet but a list of folks most of whom can continue to excel for years to come. Tom Walsh is 26 years old. Ryan Crouser is 25. There’s no reason why either of them should have peaked already. Joe Kovacs is the oldest of the seven and he’s only 29 years of age, while Darlan Romani and Tomas Stanek are 27, Michal Haratyk is 26 and Darrell Hill is 25.

This is the context for what Tom Walsh is doing. This is the company in which he keeps. Just so you know.

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