For years the major difference in technical styles at the elite level could be boiled down to whether or not a thrower 'reversed' at the end of the throw. Cadée's style plays with the orbit and adds another quarter turn of rotation at the start of the throw. After seeing him train and throw in Turkey last year and talking with his coach about the technique, I figured it was time to ask him a few questions directly.

The style itself is so unique that it doesn't even have a name yet. Feel free to share your thoughts on the technique and a potential name in the comments after the article. My suggestions are either '540' (for the number of degrees you rotate to get to the power position) or 'Neu' (after a German who used a variation of the technique in the seventies; the word also has the relevant meaning of 'new' in German).

At first glance it might seem that grip strength is important to the hammer throw. When I was just out of high school I heard legendary Brooks Johnson explain how grip strength was the key element that took Carl Brown from national-class discus thrower to a world championship finalist. I don't remember the study he cited (if you do, let me know), but he made a convincing case at the time. And while he is best known as a sprints coach, his resume also includes coaching Al Gore in the discus at St. Albans School. If grip is that important in the discus, I thought, then it is probably more important in the hammer where world class throws produce forces in excess of 300kg (660 pounds) and often hold on to the hammer with just three fingers. Yet despite this I don't think I've heard an elite thrower complain about grip in the eight years since.

This is one situation where a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, so I've compiled a few videos to give you an idea of how the events looked. The Big Shot competition in Sweden was replicated here in Zurich in 2010 and 2011. I put together a video profile of the event this year that takes a behind the scenes look at it. For a video of the original version in Stockholm, click here.

For hammer throwers, competing the day before the main event and outside the stadium is the norm. But when Swedish champion Mattias Jons found himself in this position again at last August’s Karlstad Grand Prix he had other issues on his mind during warm-ups. As Jons said, "It took one or two throws before I started to get used to throwing three meters above a running river without fear of falling in."