Gold Medalist | Camryn Rogers Swings Her Gavel

(Saint-Denis) The hammer, this unloved athletics, resonates strongly in Canada.

Forty-eight hours after the overwhelming domination of Ethan Katzberg, the likeable mustachioed man, his colleague Camryn Rogers made the object waltz further than anyone else on Tuesday evening at the Stade de France.

Crowned world champion last year, the thrower from British Columbia therefore imitated her compatriot by adding a first Olympic gold medal to her collection.

In a much tighter women’s competition, she threw the hammer 76.97m on her fifth and penultimate attempt, which allowed her to retake the lead from Annette Nneka Echikunwoke, who had been first since a third throw of 75.48m. Rogers’ gold medal was confirmed when the American failed to improve on her sixth and final throw. Young Chinese Zhao Jie (74.27m), who had taken the lead after the second round, inherited the bronze.

Rogers still showed up in the circle to make one last throw, where, “a little excited,” she bit. In shock, she knelt on the ground for a few seconds, barely holding back her tears.

“I really didn’t know what to do,” said Camryn Rogers, the first Canadian woman to win a gold medal in track and field since the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics.

The 25-year-old pitcher ran into the arms of her coach of seven years at the University of California, hitting him “like he was a brick wall.” She hugged Katzberg, who was watching the competition from the same spot, before running to her parents in the next section.

Single mother

The hug with his mother Shari was probably the longest of all the Paris Olympics. M^me Rogers raised her daughter alone from the age of three, sometimes working two jobs to make sure she had everything she needed, CBC reported in a 2022 article about her. A hairdresser in Richmond, she accepted a client’s invitation for Carmyn to try out for the local track club when she was 12.

By pure chance, she tried her hand at the hammer throw, a throw of two meters deemed sufficient by the coach for whom there was plenty to work on. The same year, Carmyn Rogers followed the discipline on television during the London Games, a discovery that crystallized her desire to go further.

After high school success, she was recruited by the Golden Bears in California, with whom she became the greatest hammer thrower in NCAA history. Crowned junior world champion in 2018, she finished fifth at the Tokyo Olympics three years later.

Rogers won silver at the 2022 senior worlds before winning gold last summer in Budapest. That status made her the favorite for Paris, especially since her runner-up and this year’s record-setter, American Brooke Andersen, did not qualify after failing all her trials at the trials.

Enveloping mother

With a gold medal around her neck, Camryn Rogers had to fight back tears again as she spoke about her mother, who is unable to watch when her daughter competes. She clutched a pendant Camryn gave her when she was seven that depicts a mother and child.

“My mother did everything in her life to make sure I had the best life possible. When it was just her and me, when she had two jobs and would arrange for her friends to take me to practice when she couldn’t make it. She fought for that her whole life. She is my rock, the person I turn to on my best and worst days. She is the shoulder I cry on. Her hugs feel the tightest and can wrap around my soul.”

The Olympic champion continued like this for a few minutes, concluding that this gold medal belonged as much if not more to her mother and her adoptive father, whom she hugged for a long time.

“He couldn’t be there at the World Championships last year. Now, to see him in the stands with my mother. He was crying, he was crying so much. They were both crying and it was so beautiful for us to experience this moment as a family.”

Ingebrigtsen lost everything

Before Camryn Rogers could nail the final nail in her victory, she had to take a breather as the men’s 1,500m final came to a dramatic conclusion. Leading for most of the race, Norwegian heavy favourite Jakob Ingebrigtsen lost it all in the final straight as he was passed on the inside by gold medallist Cole Hocker of the United States and on the outside by Josh Kerr of Great Britain, the reigning world champion who took silver. Bronze went to Yared Nuguse of the United States, denying the Norwegian, who won gold in 2021, the consolation of a podium finish. Hocker even stripped him of his Olympic record by clocking 3m 27.65 through three and three-quarter laps.

On the eve of his 21st^e birthday, Canadian sprint hopeful Savannah Sutherland battled to the line to finish fourth in her heat of the 400-metre hurdles, clocking 53.80 seconds, enough to become the second qualifier by time. The final will be contested on Thursday evening.

Julien Alfred failed in his attempt to achieve the double by placing second in the 200m final. The surprise gold medallist in the 100m, protégé of coach Edrick Floréal in Texas, never managed to threaten the American Gabrielle Thomas (21.83 s), decorated with gold thanks to a quarter-second lead (22.08 s for Julien). Brittany Brown (22.20 s), another American, took bronze.