Golden Disc

Valarie Allman won the gold medal in the discus on Tuesday. The Stanford graduate nailed her first throw at 68.98/226-4 and was never headed in the diffcult conditions, which featured a Helsinki-esque downpour during which the event was suspended.

Germany's Kristin Pudenz picked a mighty fine time to record a personal best and won silver with her 219-4/66.86. Cuba's Jaime Perez was the defending world champion, and her 215-7/65.72 won her first Olympic medal.

In early 2020, Allman's coach Zeb Zion, the assistant at the University of Texas (and someone who should really renegotiate his contract now that he has coached an Olympic gold medalist) posted a video on Twitter of Allman's first throw of the year. This was over 17 months ago.

Here is the link to that video:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1232348391390240769

And here is my response:

Mark Cullen

@trackerati

·

Feb 25, 2020

Did you notice? That discus landed on the podium.

@vallman123

@CoachSion

@oiselle

@oiselle_sally

#Tokyo2020 #TokyoOlympics

@nationalthrows

@McthrowsDotcom #ThrowsBySion

@MTCthrowers

@GreyhoundPrezX

@SOJCtrack

Quote Tweet

Zebulon R. Sion

@CoachSion

· Feb 25, 2020

First full throw of 2020 for @vallman123 • #ThrowsBySion #Discus #Athletics Tokyo

Meanwhile, a note about the next several days... I was about to post this when a certain 400m hurdle race took place. There's another one tonight and I urge you all to watch. With the current and former world record holders going head-to-head in a matchup that is every bit as good as Warholm/Benjamin, Dalilah Muhammad and Sydney McGloughlin - and Holland's Femke Bol - are sure to light up Olympic Stadium once again.

I now move into a two-day period of writing for Track and Field News, and I'll post links to my hammer throw articles for them once they're posted. See you all on Thursday - and keep watching!