As the first year of the Diamond League drew to a close last weekend, reviews and commentary are beginning to pop up online. The comments so far, however, have focused mostly on whether or not the series has been good for the athletes. I think that’s a fairly simple question to answer: it tends to be better for some of the minor events and worse for the top events. The shot putters I’ve talked to have loved the series. The event was rarely included in the Diamond League in the past decade, but this year they have been included in a high-profile meets getting the athletes both more exposure and more money. Other events have seen a decline in competitions and earnings. Because more events have been included, appearance fees have become rare in order to pay for the extra events (except for the select few Diamond League Ambassadors). A Twitter exchange between sprint star turned TV announcer Ato Boldon, high jumper Jamie Nieto, and sprint Lisa Barber concluded with Nieto saying “The Diamond League is making it real hard to make a living. Something has got to change.” The split program concept, where meets alternate hosting certain events, also means less meets for 100m runners and stars from events that used to be included in every meet. Sprinter Carmelita Jeter told Spikes Magazine that “This year I had about 40 to 50% less races, because of the split programme concept.” (By my count, she’s only done 13 meets outdoors this year versus 23 last year). This also hurts mid-level athletes, since some of the top athletes are now entering mid-level meets to fill the gaps in their schedule, which is leaving the mid-level athletes with fewer chances to compete.

So, to summarize, some athletes win and some lose. And that doesn’t even mention the hammer throw, which was excluded from the series all together. Of greater interest to me, however, is whether the Diamond League met its goal of expanding the brand of athletics…

Although I’m a track fan and athlete, my interest in athletics goes well beyond spectating and competing. For me, I also love the business side of the sport and am constantly thinking about the challenge of how we can grow athletics. One recent idea that has proved very succesful is the shot put’s move outside the stadium at many meets. This has been a classic example of thinking outside the box (and the stadium) that has worked.

How We Got Here

While throwing outside the stadium is nothing new, the idea has been gaining traction in the past decade. The short lived Titan Games first tried it in 2003. It was easy for them to decide to put the shot put outside the stadium sinec it was the only track and field event included in the strength oriented program. But, the rest of the events took place indoors and the shot put was held outside. The atmosphere was still great, leading Adam Nelson to say “it was like the combination of a rock concert and fight night.” Nelson had an amazing foul at the 2004 meet before the event disappeared. During this time, the Oregon Track Classic also used to hold the shot put outside the stadium before the meet, creating an intimate setting leading to an intense experience where Adam Nelson set his personal best of 22.51m and Kevin Toth placed just third with a throw of 21.78m.

Hello, my name is Martin and I’m addicted to the hammer throw. It may have been obvious from my obsessively regular posts about the hammer throw on this website and others. But that’s just the addiction you see on the surface. It is much deeper than that.

This weekend I am preparing to head down to Lake Como for a four-day weekend escape with my visiting girlfriend, my friend Andrea and her brother at their house their. I know the chance to relax and have fun in Italy will be well worth it, but I must be honest, I’m having a little anxiety about taking the time off of throwing. In fact, I’m even going to squeeze in a little throwing session Thursday morning before we catch the train. Still, my three day break from throwing will be my longest since September of 2007.

Training has been going poorly this week, so instead of talking about that I’ll answer a few more questions I’ve received this month.

Question: What are some of the more important things that need to be done at the beginning of the throw in order to stay on balance during the throw?

The start of the throw is the most important part and I could talk about it for a long time. Instead, I’ll just focus my comments on one big issue that I’ve been working on: when to pick up the right foot on the first turn. This is also a pretty common problem among hammer throwers and one that has generated a lot of discussion throughout the years.

Normally, people fall into two camps in this debate. On one side there are those that emulate world record holder Yuri Sedych and try to lift the right foot off early. Biomechanist Ralph Otto showed us that on Sedych’s world record throw his right foot left the round on average at 63º (where 0º is the back of the circle and 90º is the left side of the circle). On the other side are those that follow Stuart Togher’s mantra “push to 180º.” My coach takes the middle road: he says that you shouldn’t try to pick the foot up early or late. Instead, the foot will come off the ground on its own when the body is balanced and you push the ball properly to the left side.

Last week’s post about Sándor Eckschmiedt’s proposal to save the hammer throw generated quite the buzz and a record number of visitors for this site. As I wrote in the post, Eckschmiedt wants to stop the hammer throw’s drift to the periphery of track and field by changing the weight and length. These moves would help make the event safer and also cut down the cost of the event. I was undecided about the plan after reading and thinking about it last week. While I could immediately see some of the troubles it might cause, I also knew something must be done to help the hammer throw. I solicited your input and got some great ideas in response.

In general, most of you disliked the idea. But, you seemed to dislike it for different reasons. Many thought that the weight and length changes were off. For instance, some said that if we are going to use a short/heavy hammer, why not just use the weight throw. Others, such as Wisconsin-Whitewater coach Dave Hahn, suggested minor changes such as making the diameter of the hammer ball bigger or shortening the current implement. Smaller changes like that would reduce the distance and be similar to the minor changes that were made to the javelin throw in 1986. A change to the diameter would also not be unprecedented since the once legal small diameter tungsten hammers have been disallowed since the 1970s. Norm Balke also added that he thought the ball should be both larger and perhaps softer, which would make it safer and also do less damage to turf.

Other readers were skeptical that the proposal would even help the event. As I pointed out last week, the issues facing the hammer throw are far from simple and changes to the implement probably aren’t enough to fix all the problems. Some commentators even went so far as to say that rather than helping the event, Eckschmiedt’s proposal would actually harm the event.