In Search of a Good Ring

It’s hard to find good competitions this time of year, so I’ve actually spent a lot of time lately searching for good hammer rings. Showing up to a competition in Europe can be a bit of a gamble in this department. For instance, check out this ring fellow UW grad Aretha Thurmond had to throw out of in July. I’ve already found one great ring in Locarno and visited it for four meets this year. This week I had a chance to explore another ring with my former roommate, Sultana Frizell, who took a break from her training camp in Germany to visit me. On Wednesday, we found a good ring at a meet in Löffingen, a pint-sized town in the Black Forest of southwest Germany.

With Richard, Yvette, and Sultana at the Schwarzwälder Werfercup

We drove to the meet with Richard and Yvette Bot, Dutch throwers living in Switzerland that Sultana and I met in Kamloops at the World Masters Championships last year. Other than the four of us, everyone else at the meet was likely old enough to remember the war in Germany. But, the ring was good and that was enough. Yvette threw a personal best. Richard threw his best throw in seven years and a new record for the Swiss canton of Wallis. Sultana threw over 70 meters again. And, I also had my best mark since the Swiss Championships with a throw of 64.15m. I am especially happy with that mark since I was struggling to throw over 60 meters with some throws at practice last week.

Also in the past week, I wrapped up my season in the stone throw with a tenth place finish at the Swiss Championships. I threw a personal best of 4.76 meters with the 40-kilogram stone. Unfortunately I was just more than an inch out of the final and mere inches from a medal. However, I did beat a two-time world champion bobsledder with legs as thick as tree trunks. I’ve come a long way since my first competition three weeks ago and plan to challenge for the title next year once I perfect my technique. And before you say anything, yes, there is technique in stone throwing. Maybe I’ll write about that some day in the future.

For now, I’ll just share some stone throwing links with you. Track and field commentator extraordinaire Jesse Squire wrote a great piece on stone throwing for Track and Field News. At the end of the article, he quotes me on why I think the event is so great: “For me, part of what is cool about the stone throw is that it is open to anyone … it gives [the spectators] respect for how good the winners are and brings the whole town out to cheer and share a beer.” I also was finally able to get links to some of the press coverage I got before the Eidgenössiches Schwing- und Älperfest. Here is a link to a newspaper article I was interviewed for, and here is a link to one of the radio interviews. Both are in German, so for those of you that don’t speak German I can assure you that my German was perfect. For those of you that speak German, I apologize since this was my first radio interview in a foreign language, but I’m getting better every day.