If you’ve been reading my posts regularly, you might have forgotten that I actually throw the hammer. I’ve posted about being a spectator. I’ve posted about competing in other throwing events. I’ve even posted about coaching the hammer throw. Well I am now here to remind you that I also compete in the hammer.

Unfortunately, the chances to compete dwindled after the Swiss Championships and it was exactly one month before my next competition. It is amazing how fast the rust sets back in since it felt like my first competition of the season again. I had four sector fouls to begin the competition and ended up throwing 63.15 meters. The result is okay compared to my results this season, but I was disappointed since I started to feel good in the final round, but had run out of attempts by then. My latest competition was on Sunday, but that is a competition I would rather forget. The weather was great and the meet was well run, but my legs were dead. I felt no power whatsoever, partially due to where I am at in my training program and probably also due to another stone throw competition I competed in the day before the meet (which was worth it, I’m improving and took home a cool trophy for winning both the 40- and 50-kg stones). I still was able to win and take home the prize money, which was quickly spent on a nice delicious pizza with a lakeside view in Locarno. This was my fourth meet of the year in Locarno and I think it truly is the best place for a hammer competition in Switzerland. It is a little out of the way, but it more than makes up for it with consistently good weather and people. I definitely wanted to hang out longer, but, as always, I had to head back to Zürich for work on Monday.

It’s a rare opportunity when I guy can put on a powder blue shirt with a edelweiss flower pattern and come off as more masculine, so when I heard about the opportunity to do just that I immediately signed up for the stone throw competition at the 2010 Eidgenössiches Schwing- und Älperfest (ESAF) in Frauenfeld. After all, what is more masculine than seeing who can throw a giant rock the farthest.

Before I explain how the competition went, let me explain a little about the ESAF. The event is the Olympics of traditional Swiss sports. It is held every three years and the main attraction is schwingen, a form of wrestling that is the Swiss national sport and traces its roots back hundreds of years in the Alps. Rather than explain the rules, I suggest you check out this video from the last ESAF in 2007. As you can see, it is an extremely unique and interesting sport to watch and even more fun to watch in person.

It is the environment at ESAF, in addition to the sport, that makes it one of my favorite sporting events to attend. The wrestling arena is packed with nearly 50,000 fans. While tickets have been sold out for months, an equal number of people come without tickets to fill the enormous beer halls showing the matches in the huge grounds surrounding the stadium. Think Super Bowl meets Oktoberfest. Over the course of the two day event over 130,000 bratwurst and 200,000 liters of beer are consumed. It is also a cultural event, with many people wearing traditional Swiss dress and various yodeling groups make their way around the grounds. Perhaps best of all is that the winner becomes a household name and takes their unique share of the $750,000 prize purse: Arnold, a three year old 5’4″ angus bull weighing in at 2,500 pounds.

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.

One of the perks of working in Europe is the generous amount of vacation days employees receive. While some jobs in America may advertise a month of vacation time, the reality is that it is impossible to take that much time off of work. Most attorneys I know rarely take time off since doing so will only make it harder for them to meet the required annual number of hours they must bill. In Europe, on the other hand, you not only receive a lot of vacation time, but you are expected to use it. For example, at UBS we receive five weeks of vacation each year and are required to take at least one two-week long break.

Recently, however, I discovered the down side to all this vacation time: everyone receives it. This becomes a problem when you try to visit your favorite local restauraunt and a sign on its window announces that it will be closed while the owners are on vacation for a month. With most of the local people on vacation, the city also becomes a giant noisy and disorganized construction zone starting exactly at 7:00 every weekday morning since there is no better time to repair the city’s infrastructure than when half the town is gone.

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.