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Ryan Crouser wrote the note down and brought it to the stadium just in case.
“Grandpa. We did it. 2020 Olympic Champion!” It said.
The best shot putter in the world had a feeling he was going to win. After doing that on Thursday, he took out this piece of paper and showed it to the world. Crouser’s second consecutive Olympic gold medal was a tribute to his grandfather, Larry, who died shortly before Crouser’s departure for Tokyo.
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“Losing him the week before the Olympics was obviously sad,” Crouser said. “But I feel like he may have been here in spirit.”
Years ago, in Larry Crouser’s backyard, Ryan attempted his first throw with the heavy metal ball that would shape his life. What a journey this has produced.
Crouser saw the world with this shot put. Dominated him too. He set the world record earlier this summer at the Olympic trials. On Thursday, he also raised his own Olympic record, to 23.30 meters (76 feet, 5½ inches).
He won the first US men’s track and field gold medal at the Tokyo Games, arriving later than expected on day 7 of the competition. It was too late for his grandfather to see him, although Crouser and his family felt he knew it.
“Along with you cheering on the most fantastic thing, there’s just that little word ‘I wish Grandpa was here’,” Ryan’s mom Lisa said at a party in Redmond, in Oregon. “You know he’s watching.
On Crouser’s big day, his American teammate Joe Kovacs was second and Tomas Walsh of New Zealand third.
It was exactly the same podium as five years ago at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. This is the first time in an individual Olympic track and field event that there has been a repeated podium in consecutive Summer Games – the same three athletes occupying exactly the same positions, according to Olympic historian Bill Mallon.
“We keep pushing each other,” said Kovacs, the 2019 world champion whose longest throw was 22.65.
Crouser’s childhood throws in his grandfather’s backyard were unpredictable at times. Once he threw one from the top of the garden shed.
“I went back the next day and replaced this,” Crouser said.
Time was advancing. Eventually, Larry Crouser lost his hearing. Ryan started to write notes.
“They had a correspondence by correspondence,” explained his mother.
The last was perhaps the most important.
Crouser put a pen on paper in his bedroom a few days ago to calm his nerves. Not so much about the event – he wasn’t nervous – but about a possible positive test for the coronavirus. The positive test that knocked pole vaulter Sam Kendricks out of the Olympics shook him.
Even for the world record holder and defending champion, the note was something of a leap of faith. But Crouser figured that at worst, no one would ever find out. It turns out he was there. After the victory, he proudly displayed it as he paraded in his cowboy hat.
Crouser’s grandfather was alive on June 18 to see him break a world record of 31 at the US Olympic Trials.
“He’s watched this launch on the iPad, thousands and thousands of times,” Crouser said. “He was my biggest fan.
The note he wrote after that was simple: “World Record Holder.”
When asked how far this throw could have gone at his grandfather’s house, Crouser laughed and replied, “It would have been in the neighbor’s yard. I don’t know if he would have hit a building, maybe. -be a home. “
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On a scorching day in Tokyo, Crouser cheered after his latest attempt – sending chalk dust into the air. He later went on to share a hug and a handshake with his father, Mitch, who serves as his trainer.
This victory, however, was for Grandpa Larry.
“He always told me to stop and just enjoy the moment,” Crouser said. “He knows about me, I’m still very goal oriented and looking for the long term. His thing he always told me was to stop and smell the roses.”
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