UK Throw Events - State of play

[Ursus]

And you reckon men’s 400m running is in a state with our top ranked 66th in the world and 4 in the top 100……

Depressing stat of the day. The UK leads in the spear are world ranked 123 (men) and 137 (women).

Has there ever been an event in a worse state? Not just throws.

[philipo]

And you reckon men’s 400m running is in a state with our top ranked 66th in the world and 4 in the top 100……

Depressing stat of the day. The UK leads in the spear are world ranked 123 (men) and 137 (women).

Has there ever been an event in a worse state? Not just throws.

Mystery clearly suggests, but obliquely, that we give up and concentrate on a few track events, preferably our middle distance events. Is he secretly a selector who can't admit to us that he is, and doesn't give a tuppeny toss for field events especially the the throws😀

[MysteryBrick]

I'm not saying we give them up, I'm saying that as a nation we have a heritage in the middle distance which explains our relative strength and depth there, and expecting that in all events is unrealistic.

[philipo]

My assessment is that Hammer is generally in pretty good health at the moment, Discus looks a lot better with Okoye around, Shot is fairly meh apart from Lincoln (who I have a lot of respect for) and Javelin is a total trashfire.

Oh dear, I forgot we have the Okoye guy, who probably considers we should be grateful for a couple of decent throws per summer. Talk about wasted talent ; the perfect example.

[MysteryBrick]

Okoyo did indeed totally balls up in Tokyo, but he remains GB's best ever discus thrower no matter what you think of him, and his return means the event is stronger nationally.

[philipo]

And you reckon men’s 400m running is in a state with our top ranked 66th in the world and 4 in the top 100……

Depressing stat of the day. The UK leads in the spear are world ranked 123 (men) and 137 (women).

Has there ever been an event in a worse state? Not just throws.

in rare moments of optimism i think maybe one of our young sub 46 guys will suddenly blossom and a rebirth will begin; give them those special shoes it may assist.

[trickstat]

And you reckon men’s 400m running is in a state with our top ranked 66th in the world and 4 in the top 100……

Depressing stat of the day. The UK leads in the spear are world ranked 123 (men) and 137 (women).

Has there ever been an event in a worse state? Not just throws.

Across both men and women at the same time, quite possibly not. For example, I know that our men's HJ was very poor for most of the 1960s and 70s but the women's was more respectable, if not actually super strong.

[Occasional Hope]

Just noticed an interesting result from late September - Jamie Bushnell threw a massive pb in the SP of 21.39 to go ahead of Scott Lincoln in the UK rankings. Is that a reliable measurement? Never heard of him before. Surely a mistake???

He's no youngster (34!) but looking at his Po10 only started throwing seriously this year.

[jjimbojames]

No chance. He threw the jav just a bit further, according to his Po10

[Occasional Hope]

Ah, I wonder if they put the wrong event on the listings? They need to sort it out pronto. (Thought it didn't seem right )

[philipo]

Poor little UKA and the useless incompetents who are content to wait for the next middle distance athletes to shine and dish out the hype.. The top people do not, i venture to suggest, have sleepless nights about the crap coaching here of highly technical events; sad that Mo, Greg and the top hep woman could not last forever.
I suppose with the highly convenient chat about heritage of mid distance greats of the past, we can hope for no better throwing talent in the near future and also applies to the jumps to a slightly less extent.
When i read from one expert here that the reappearance of Okoye was grounds for opining that things were looking up in the mens Discus, one has to laugh.
Lets face an uncomfortable reality; since when did any one in the top levels of British athletics management give a convincing argument that they beleive that without top coaches across the board our sports standing may well recede into the far distance; certainly as far as the throws and jumps are concerned.

[marra]

Given how poor our discus throwing has been, it would have been tough for Okoye's reappearance to NOT be looking up for that event. For context, even with his under performance at Tokyo, he's essentially the only person we have throwing over 64m, let alone anything close to 67m or higher.

So, whilst we shouldn't be putting up the bunting, it's still an improvement from where we were. That just says more about how terrible we are elsewhere.

Whilst I'm not going to sit here and defend our coaching/administrating setup (I do not know enough about the inner workings of either to either support/criticise accurately), I do think that we have to acknowledge that MysteryBrick is right to an extent. We've always been a nation of sprinters and middle distance runners, with the occassional star in other areas.

The bare facts are that we've won 211 Olympic medals in athletics. Only 37 of those have come in the field. For further context we've won 27 medals in the two events of 800m/1500m alone.

We can still make a reasonable argument that we should be doing better than we are in field events, given we are one of the more well funded nations. I don't disagree with that. But we should set reasonable expectations as to what that will entail.