HAMMER THROWING has a well-earned reputation as one of track & field’s most confounding events. “It’s such a beautiful and interesting sport,” says ’19 world champion DeAnna Price. “You have to be aggressive and generate a lot of power, but it needs to be a calm attack, where you maintain your length and your feel for the ball. If you lose that, it’s easy to panic, get negative, and start circling the toilet bowl.”
Price has learned to guard against such moments, at least in practice, by keeping a loaded water gun on hand. If someone in her training group succumbs to self-doubt, they get zapped. “I call it the ‘negativity blaster,’” she says.
Rudy Winkler does not train with Price, but if he did he’d have required very little dousing so far this season, his best as a pro. In addition to extending his American Record to 272-10 (83.16) at the Pre Classic, Winkler has surpassed 80m (262-5) on three other occasions, a level of consistency which makes him, for the first time in his career, a clear favorite to take a medal at the World Championships, something that no male hammer thrower from the U.S. has done. Ever.
The key to breaking that streak? Caring. But not too much.
Mastering the hammer requires years of focused repetition. Patience and consistency are, according to 4-time US champion Kibwé Johnson, the only way to get past the 75m range clean. “The 80-meter guys,” he says, “are a little different. They are absolutely driven, true students of the sport.”
That level of commitment suits Winkler just fine.
He describes himself as being inherently unable to “half-ass” anything. When he purchased a record player not long ago, he didn’t just go to the store and pick one out like a normal person might, but instead spent weeks researching different models. “I put everything into a chart,” he says, “so that I could completely obsess over it.”
This hyper-focus has allowed him to acquire a certain set of skills. He’s great at video games, the yo-yo, and of course hammer throwing, which he found to be a perfect outlet as “a skill that you can never master.”
The effort Winkler poured into learning the hammer brought him success, including a HS Record toss of 260-5 (79.37) in ’13 — on the same day he also threw a HSR 249-0 (75.91) with the 6kg Junior implement — but with that success came expectations, and those were not so easy to deal with.
He lost his frosh year at Cornell to a knee injury, then spent the ’15 season beating himself up for not being able to consistently reach 70m(229-8). A strong ’16 campaign culminated with an OT win and a spot on the team for Rio, but the roller coaster ride continued. “My anxieties came back,” he recalls, “and I kept putting unrealistic expectations on myself, even in training.”
Still, he managed to win the NCAA title in ’17, but finished his eligibility with a mostly miserable transfer year at Rutgers. In his mind, he should have been a 78-meter (255-11) man, but the best he could manage all season was a 242-3 (73.85) toss at the Big 10.
Frustration drove Winkler to enlist the help of sports psychologist Nick Molinaro, who asked him to reflect on the role of sports in his life. “He tried to help me understand,” says Winkler, “that expectations don’t define who I am. It used to be the case that if I didn’t achieve a certain expectation, it felt like an attack on my identity, like I wasn’t a good person somehow.”
Price can relate. “In order to be successful,” she says, “you have to make your sport your life. But then when you fail, it’s hard not to feel like ‘I’m a failure,’ especially at a meet like the Olympics or Worlds where you’re representing your country and you know people are counting on you.”
To deal with this type of pressure, Price says that during warmups at a big competition she tries to remind herself how much she loves the simple act of throwing, and that it’s a victory to even qualify for a World or Olympic team. “I tell myself that medal or no medal, I’m still a fine thrower and a good person. I’m still Sweet D!”
Norwegian javelin great Andreas Thorkildsen, a 2-time Olympic champ, had a similar attitude towards competing. “People at home expect me to win and I do what I can to win,” he explains when asked how he handled big-meet pressure. “But, you’ve got to know that you’ve got good days on the track and you’ve got bad days on the track. I don’t think anyone is going to hate me if I don’t throw well for one day. At the end of the day, it’s still entertainment.”
That’s the type of philosophy Molinaro encouraged Winkler to adopt, and though it took him a few years to “mature enough to really appreciate what Nick was saying,” Rudy feels like he’s gotten much better at maintaining his chill. That process was accelerated by his relationship with Olivia Foster, whom he met during his final semester at Cornell. Along with Molinaro and coaches Paddy McGrath and Roman Feldman, she formed a support team that helped Rudy finish in the top 8 at the last two Olympics and World Championships. Her name is now Olivia Winkler.
Maintaining equilibrium as a world-class athlete is an ongoing process, though. “A recurring theme in my life,” he says, “is that I put these expectations on myself, then I fail, then I realize it doesn’t really matter. But now I know if I don’t achieve those goals, I’m still me. I still have my wife, my health. It’s freeing, and I’ve been way more emotionally stable when it comes to throwing.”
Winkler says that when he first broke the American Record in ’21, it took him “a full week to recover physically, and maybe years to recover emotionally.” But after extending the latest record at Pre he was back at practice on Monday and felt “fully recovered” by Tuesday.
Winkler’s steadiness will be tested again at the upcoming USATF Championships and, assuming that goes well, the Worlds in Tokyo. Johnson, recently named men’s head coach for Team USA, will be rooting hard for Rudy to get the U.S. hammer men off the schneid. “It won’t be easy,” he warns. “The NCAAs and USAs are special meets, but there’s nothing like wearing the ‘USA’ on your chest at a major. What it comes down to is, can you feel your throw when there are 65,000 people in the stands screaming?”
The answer, according to Rudy who describes himself as “feeling zen” these days, lies within. “No matter the meet, you have to relinquish control. You look inward and tap into your own inner being to muster out any progress that might be there. Hopefully, I can put together a clean, consistent series. But if not, it doesn’t change who I am.”
