Draped in the stars and stripes, a kid from Boring raised his hand toward the sky as raucous cheers rained down upon him — putting up not one, not two, but three golden fingers.
Ryan Crouser secured history for Team USA at the 2024 Paris Olympics with his third throw of the finals. Showcasing his patented “Crouser Slide,” which adds a lateral move and further rotation to each throw, he tossed it 22.90 meters (75.13 feet).
That season-best attempt for the best-ever shot putter secured his third Olympic gold medal Saturday morning, Aug. 3, making 31-year-old Crouser the only man to ever achieve that accolade. He is also the oldest man to win gold in the shot since 1972.
Finishing second was fellow American Joe Kovacs (22.15) and third was Jamaica’s Rajindra Campbell (22.15). The third for Team USA, Payton Otterdahl, just missed the podium with a best mark of 22.03.
All eyes were on Crouser, especially for a group of cheering fans who gathered for a watch party at his alma mater Barlow High School. The school auditorium was decked out in red, white and blue flowers and balloons, as well as some prophetic splashes of gold. The crowd watched the competition 5,122 miles away with rapt attention, cheering every time the hometown kid showed up on the screen.
“We are all super proud of Ryan and his family,” said Barlow Principal Jason Bhear, who spurred the event.
Our Coffee House supplied caffeine and treats and the Barlow Football Booster Club helped organize and decorate.
Paris went as smoothly as possible for Crouser, with a routine single toss in qualifiers to earn a berth in the finals. He had a simple, easy toss of 21.49 to make it through, giving the camera a grin and “all done” signal.
Then his first attempt in the finals again gave him the lead — a toss of 22.64 meters that would have won the competition outright. But Crouser improved on each of his subsequent throws, before succumbing to the elements like his fellow competitors.
Stade De France, the track and field venue, had driving rain that hampered the second half of the shot put. It caused shorter attempts from Crouser on his fourth and fifth toss, prompting him to scratch, while others slipped in more spectacular fashion — most notably Nigeria’s Chukwuebuka Cornnell Enekwechi, who lost his footing and went down mid-throw.
Crouser was born in Portland and raised in East Multnomah County in Boring. He attended Barlow High School, where he broke records in shot, discus and javelin. Crouser then broke from a family tradition of attending the University of Oregon by heading to the University of Texas at Austin, where he won four NCAA titles in the shot.
He comes from a famed throwing family — dad Mitch Crouser was an alternate on the 1984 Olympic discus team; uncle Brian Crouser competed in two Olympics in the javelin; his other uncle Dean Crouser was a star for the Ducks. His cousin Sam Crouser threw at Gresham High and as a Duck, and also competed in Rio in the javelin. Another cousin, Haley Crouser, threw javelin for both Oregon and Texas.
His first Olympic gold medal was 2016 Rio de Janeiro; and then his second at 2020 Tokyo, where he tossed an Olympic record of 23.30 meters. Crouser has the world record for the shot, both indoors and outdoors. He set the outdoor record at 23.56 meters in 2023; and the indoor of 22.82 in 2021.
This was the frosting atop what has been a bit of a bitter cake this season for Crouser. He had been dealing with a nagging elbow injury and torn pectoral muscle heading into the 2024 U.S. Olympic Track and Field Team Trials at Hayward Field in Eugene.
Those injuries prevented him from training, and forced his season debut to be made at the Trials. He also only mustered one throw in the qualifying round to further limit any damage.
But he won the Trials with a toss of 22.84 meters (74-feet 11-inches), a victory that was more of a “sigh of relief and kind of proving to myself that I’ve still got it,” Crouser said on the NBC Sports broadcast.
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