Crouser and the secret to winning when it matters

Ryan Crouser retained his shot put world title on Saturday despite being affected by blood clots in a lower leg taking gold in style with a championship record throw of 23.51 metres.

Ryan Crouser recorded a gigantic throw of 23.51m, the second longest of all time and five centimetres short of his world record. | Photo Credit: Getty Images

It’s fair to say Indian athletics had one of its worst days in recent memory at the World Stage – at least in the gap between expectation and reality. On the first day of the World Championships, despite seeming as well prepared as possible, nearly everyone put in performances well short of their best of the season.

Right now, the team is struggling for answers. The only thing that’s clear is they were weighed down by the scale of expectations and pressure to perform. On such a day, you wonder just what it takes to perform where it counts. How do you show up when you have all the reasons not to?

They might look to Ryan Crouser for some inspiration. If the dictionary ever had an entry on big game player -- it would probably have a picture of the 30-year-old American.

Crouser could very well have skipped the World Championships. He had all the reason in the world not to show up here in Budapest. As a two-time Olympic champion in the shot put, the reigning world champion and world record holder who is unbeaten this year, he has nothing to prove. He had a genuine medical excuse should he have taken it.

Ryan Crouser of the United States. | Photo Credit: Getty Images

Diagnosed with blood clots to his legs a day before he was to fly to Budapest, Crouser’s training in the last 20 days leading up to the competition was, in his words, ‘terrible’. The doctors told him to weigh the risks of flying and competing with his health and safety. He was nowhere near his physical peak. No excuses. Crouser rolled the dice.

He showed up at the World Championships. He made the final. His first throw of the final had won gold. In the second, he had set a new championship record with 22.98m. In his sixth, he extended it further to 23.51m, the second longest of all time, just five centimetres short of his world record.

So, just how does he do it?

There are no easy answers from the man who seems to have it all figured out. There’s just an understanding that you just have to stay open to solving problems you didn’t even know existed.

“There are three levels to mastery,” he says. “The first is when you don’t know anything. The second is when you think you know everything but you don’t know anything. The last stage is when you realise just how much you don’t know and just try to figure it out as you go along.”

Crouser didn’t know he had clots on his leg in the lead-up to the World Championships. He thought he had a calf strain picked up after a long season. He suggests it was probably due to COVID he might have picked up last month.

“Don’t know what caused it. I lost my sense of smell coming back from the Diamond League in London. It was probably COVID. I also had a long travel and that didn’t help. I also had a training session in 104-degree heat so I was possibly a little dehydrated. But I had no symptoms, no swelling, no redness, no heat. It was diagnosed as a calf strain. Maybe tear. I felt that made sense,” he says.

It was only when a worried physical therapist suggested he get a Doppler test done that Crouser realised just what he was dealing with. “The biggest risk was getting here,” he says. “It was a slight risk but if the blood clots were to move a little bit, it would be difficult to diagnose a pulmonary embolism because you have tightness in the chest, are a little out of breath and that’s not very easy to distinguish from regular anxiety since I’m playing one of the biggest tournaments of my career,” he says.

Instead of looking for ways out, Crouser decided to take the challenge head-on. He weighed his options and decided to go ahead with competing. “If the clots would have been higher, it would have been more serious. There might have been a point where I would have to decide against taking the risk to my health. But the clots were pretty distal,” he says.

Ryan Crouser registered a championship record on his way to gold. | Photo Credit: Getty Images

That didn’t mean training was any easier. “It impacted my training a lot. But I just had to figure out. There’s constant pain management. I was just trying to throw while being in a lot of pain,” he says. Crouser’s focus, once he decided to compete, wasn’t to look for cop-outs but for answers. “My questions were - Can I still do worlds? If I can do the worlds, can I mitigate the risks? What medications can I take legally?”

Conditions were far from ideal, but when it mattered, Crouser stepped up. He didn’t just medal, which would have been more than enough in the circumstances. He looked to get better with each attempt.

“I tell the athletes I’m advising -- when you are in a meet, you can make a mistake but don’t make the same mistake twice. In the sixth throw, I had a near perfect throw,” he says. Near perfect - it was nearly a new world record.

“When it left my hand, I thought it might be. It was a better technical execution than the one (World Record of 23.56m) I did in UCLA. But I just didn’t have the power in my body. If I throw a number out, I was missing 30 cm at least,” he says.

Despite this, given the context, Crouser rates the throw and his performance as the best of his career.

“I wasn’t in the physical shape I wanted to be in. Without a doubt, the previous 20 days were pretty terrible in terms of limitations. My performance was testament to the physical preparation that I had to do to get to this point. Tonight was the best performance that I ever had. I’m happy I was able to to overcome the biggest adversity I had at a world championships.”

Crouser says the way to overcome adversity is to take it as a challenge and not to get bogged down in the details. “I didn’t feel I had anything to prove coming here. Even If I had finished 12th, I would have been proud of myself. I’m not worried about what everyone else is doing. I’m just worried about what I am doing. That’s what’s motivated me from the time I was a triple jumper and that’s what motivates me about what I’m doing now,” he says.

“I always tell people you win a championship months in advance. But you can still lose the championships the night before,” he says.

If there’s one thing you can know for sure, Crouser had no intention of losing in Budapest.