Swiss Athletics Hammer Workshop

Whenever I complain about the hammer throwing situation in America, I always need to remind myself that it could be worse. It could be like Switzerland. America has come quite a long ways in the last decade. Switzerland has been going in the other direction.

The Swiss hammer throwing community in Locarno.

In the late nineties, Switzerland had more than five throwers over 65 meters. For comparison’s sake, Canada, a country with nearly five times as many people, had just three throwers over 65 meters last year.

But the fortunes have changed. Last season I was the only thrower over 65 meters in Switzerland and I learned to throw in America. Two more throwers were over fifty meters, but both are over 35 and had either already retired or were nearing retirement. The next best result was under 50 meters and an underwhelming 45.98m was good enough for the bronze medal at the Swiss Championships. With few coaches and competitions, participation is low. We need to do something to turn things around, and thankfully the Swiss federation agrees. They invited the top throwers, coaches, and youth to a hammer throw workshop last weeked at the Tenero national training center near Locarno. This was the first such event here in more than a decade.

From my point of view, the weekend was a success. We had a mix of training session and technical training for the athletes as well as classroom discussion for both coaches and athletes. Samuele Dazio, a native of Locarno, provided some insight on what it takes to be an elite thrower. During his prime, Dazio had a best of 74 meters and set multiple national records. I also gave a presentation on Bondarchuk, which is now available on the German version of this site: Hammerwurf.ch. The only downsides for the weekend were that the typical beautiful Ticino weather was replaced with rain and that having four national languages slows down discussions. For example, I was speaking in my accented German while a native Italian speaker translated from German to French for the Francophones (Italian speakers were forced to listen in either French or German). Changing languages back and forth definitely caused some confusion and at one point the translater was inadvertently translating French to French. I guess that is a price to pay for such a diverse culture.

Presenting on my favorite topic: Bondarchuk

The weekend ended with a roundtable discussion involving everyone. We discussed what we needed to do to become competitive again. Switzerland has little chance to be competitive in the 100m dash, but any country that invests in the hammer throw can see results. Growing the hammer will be a long term project, as it has been in America. But with a small country, it may be easier to implement. I am still impressed about how America has turned things around with new groups of throwers cropping up in every corner of the large country. It starts with getting more athletes involved, more coaches trained, and more opportunities for athletes to compete. While no definite plan was laid out, I hope to post updates of our progress over the next year. And if nothing else, the small hammer throwing community definitely became closer and we will use that to push each other in the future. I’m also looking forward to using Samuele as a resource this season. His training background and philosophies are very similar to mine. While both of us have trouble with German, we are fluent in hammer throwing.