Tom Walsh Does As Tom Walsh Does, Winning Another Diamond League Title
Eliza McCartney’s injury and Val Adams’ motherhood have meant the kiwi contingent at the Diamond League finals wasn’t the busiest. Nick Willis did join in on a few meets towards the end but only a few as he ramps up his recovery from injury for one last swing at the Olympics, not enough to qualify for the finals. But Tom Walsh was there and y’all know what Tom Walsh does in finals.
The way the Diamond League works these days is the points acquired through the season are counted as qualifying for a standalone finale; rather than the double points that used to be on offer in the last round it’s the trophy and everything on the line. And here we had all the major men’s shot put scrappers, all swinging from the knees with the title on the line.
Just in case anyone was doubting that fact, Walshy went eight of eighth in the throwing order and by the time he stepped into the circle for his first attempt he’d already seen Darlan Romani go 21.94m, Darrell Hill go 22.03m and then, directly before Walsh, Olympic champion Ryan Crouser went even longer with 22.11m. Season’s best for Hill while Brazil’s Romani was only a centimetre behind his own 2018 benchmark. When Walsh could only muster 21.06m at the first stab he found himself sitting in fifth place.
Crouser and Romani both fouled their second shot but Hill went huge with 22.23m. That’s him suddenly back in the form that saw him win the Diamond League final a year ago in Brussels (he threw a PB of 22.44m that day, 364 days earlier). A long way to go in the competition, sure, but massive pressure on Tom Walsh to live up to his favourite tag.
So he only went and did a bit of this…
Count it at 22.60m. Seven centimetres back on his personal best set in Auckland in March but four centimetres beyond Joe Kovacs’ Diamond League record, one more record to stash on the Wikipedia page for Tomas. The furthest in-competition throw in the history of the Diamond League. Get that into you. Needless to say it was also a meeting record in Zurich, surpassing world record holder Randy Barnes’ 22.42m pop from way back in 1988, a few years before Walsh was even born.
Tomáš Stanek rose to that challenge with a season’s best 21.87m. Romani threw at least 21.65m on all five of his legal throws but wasn’t able to top that first effort. Crouser, probably the one guy with the ability to match what Walsh had done, raised his number to 22.18m but no higher. Darrell Hill fouled two of his last four efforts but all four of his measured shots were over 22 metres – a mark he hadn’t hit before this season. His peak was a massive 22.40m. He still fell twenty centimetres short of Tom Walsh’s best, Walsh only clicking that one time but once he did he pretty much had it all wrapped up. A bit surprising to see the Polish athlete and European Champion Michal Haratyk struggling, fouling off his final three attempts, he’s one of the three men (along with Walsh and Crouser) who have topped 22 metres in 2018 but he couldn’t manage better than 21.23m here.
You know what that means, then. Tomas Walsh: 2018 Diamond League Champion. His second Diamond League trophy in three years. Just the second New Zealander to win a Diamond League trophy after Valerie Adams’ five titles. Too bloody good.
Tom Walsh: “I am so happy, things went so well for me. Two years ago I already won the Diamond League here. It was a tough competition today and the result is just so great. The crowd was amazing and the competition so awesome.”
And of course he bagged a cheeky NZ$75,000 as a reward for it all. Can’t say he doesn’t deserve it after winning by so much despite this being possibly the toughest Diamond League final of all time. The sport is as competitive as it has been in years, probably for two decades back when world records were being broken and subsequently asterisked given the PED rumours of the day. Yet Tom Walsh can still go out there and win by twenty centimetres.
He just has a way of rising to these occasions. A crap one at the DL Final twelve months ago is the outlier. He’s the Commonwealth champion, the World Championships winner, two-time reigning World Indoor champion and a bronze medallist at the last Olympic Games. In twenty proper outdoor meetings this year he has finished first in fifteen of them. Tom Walsh wins 75% of his meetings these days. And he’s got two more left in his European season before it’s back to building houses in Timaru for a while.
Tom Walsh again: “This year there was three things I really wanted to do. One was to win the world indoors champs, I did that. Second one was to win the Commonwealth Games and I managed to do that too and the third one was to win the Diamond League and I have managed to do that.”
That’s a pretty decent season, aye?
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