Olten and Locarno Meet Recaps

This week has been busy with two small competitions in the past three days. It has been hard for me to find good meets lately since there is a small break in the European schedule when most countries have their national championships. Switzerland and Germany will have their championships next weekend, France is this weekend, and Italy was last weekend. Even without the conflicts, there are not many good hammer competitions. While I had lined up a competition in Hungary for this weekend, the plans fell through (unfortunately after I bought my plane ticket). Instead, I found a few local “all-comers” type meets to throw in. While I trained through both meets, it has been several weeks since my last competition and I wanted to find one more meet before the Swiss Championships.

My first meet was in Olten, a small town mostly known as a transportation hub since it is located approximately 30 minutes from Zurich, Basel, Luzern, and Bern. I’ve competed at this meet before and wanted to return. Unfortunately, so did many others. With 22 competitors, the competition dragged on for more than two hours. My first two throws felt great, but were sector fouls and by the time I adjusted my technique, I was out of energy from the long day and threw just 62.32m.

With a bad taste in my mouth, I made a last minute decision to hop on a train to Locarno yesterday and compete at a special hammer/discus meet to innagurate their new throwing ring. Locarno is located south of the Alps in Ticino, the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. The great thing about Zürich is that I can catch a train after work and, after a three-hour train ride of breaktaking beauty through the Alps, I am lakeside eating authentic Italian food with sunny weather and a few palms trees to add to the scene. The meet itself was again a bit disappointing. While there were fewer competitors, but with the 8pm start time I still felt a bit tired from working during the day and the train ride. Nevertheless, I threw 63.51 meters and fouled a throw easily of 65 meters (unfortunately that is my best result since coming over to Switzerland in May). I was able to restock my reserves with some gelato after the meet. That gave me enough energy to run though the train station with my bag in one hand and gelato in the other as the whistle blew announcing the train’s departure (although I guess I wouldn’t have needed to the energy if I had just walked directly to the train in the first place). I’m pretty sure I heard some of the locals laughing at this scene, but I think it’s okay to look like a stereotypical tourist in the name of good food.

I’ll be traveling back to Ticino next week for the Swiss championships. While the competition will take place in nearby Lugano, the hammer throw will again be held in Locarno. I’m looking forward to it since their new ring felt great and the officials were friendly, helpful, and good. I even tried to sneak a small foot foul by them, but they caught it. Training continues to go well, so with some rest and another week of training I plan on throwing a season’s best at next week’s Swiss Championships.