Here’s betting you have never thought twice about shot put. No worries. Statistically, you have plenty of company. Even for hardcore devotees of track and field, it is the track part that tends to capture the imagination. Other than the odd pole vaulter, the odd high jumper, it’s the sprinters and hurdlers who get all of the glory. The big guys and girls sweating it out on the infield while the glamour events go on, literally, around them, are rarely more than a passing curiosity.
But think of it this way. The earliest incarnations of what we call sport must have been something like one of the following: wrestling, or boxing, or some combination of the two, a kind of caveman MMA; running from here to there to determine who was the fastest; or picking up a really heavy rock and seeing who could throw it farthest.
Elemental stuff, as simple a contest as can be imagined — not at all like those made-up sports such as synchronized-this or trampoline-that or ice dancing, that fill out the modern calendar (no slight to our fine trampolinists, or to the nose-clip crowd, or to our peerless ice dancers Virtue and Moir. Well, almost no slight…)
And right now, the best in the world in one of those primal events is also one of our own. By the time the London Olympics kick off next August, you will have heard a lot about the gentle giant from Kamloops, B.C., named Dylan Armstrong, and by the time those Games are finished, he could be part of a very short list of Canadian gold medallists there. (This isn’t going to be Vancouver-Whistler, folks. There will be no orgy of winning, no endless repetitions of "O Canada" and that "Believe" song. It will be more like the old days, when Canadians were happy to celebrate the good college try.)
At 30, Armstrong is just now approaching his peak, and there is a case to be made that he is already among Canada’s best athletes in any category, that what he accomplished in 2011 ought to at least put his name on the ballot. In October, Armstrong won his second Pan American Games gold medal at the little-watched proceedings in Guadalajara, Mexico, setting a record in the process.
More significantly, he also came within a hair of winning gold at the World Championships in Athletics (the sport’s premier event) in Daegu, South Korea in September. By claiming silver, he became the first Canadian ever to win a world championship medal in a throwing event, and the only Canadian to win any kind of medal at this year’s meet.
Armstrong’s throw of 22.21 metres at the Canadian championships in June was a personal best, and the best throw by anyone in the world in 2011. He is ranked first in his event by the IAAF, and he won the season’s shot put championship in the Diamond League, the highest echelon of track and field competition.
Put that all together and it’s pretty definitive. Armstrong, who also won the Commonwealth Games gold in 2010, and finished a mere centimetre short of the podium in Beijing, is the king of track and field’s big men. We have never produced his like before.
A stretch that Canada’s Athlete of the Year should be a shot putter? Check out the history and you’ll find a diverse group that extends beyond the hockey player norm. There’s no arguing with how good Armstrong is, and there’s no arguing with what he does. It is sport at its most pure.
Next finalist: Patrick Chan