by Rob Leachman
This Series
- Introduction
- Part I – Randy Matson
- Part II – Parry O’Brien
- Part III – Ryan Crouser
- Conclusion
Part Two – Parry O’Brien
A two-time gold medalist, a three-time Olympic medalist, and a member of what at the time was an unprecedented four Olympic teams. The holder of sixteen world records in the shot put, including the first 60-foot throw, and an unprecedented winning streak of 116 competitions. And the architect of the shot put technique that shares his name and was the predominant technique in the event for over four decades, and is still widely used today.
“In no other athlete has so much quality come in such quantity,” wrote Cordner Nelson, co-founder of Track and Field News, about Parry O’Brien.
So, where should this iconic athlete be placed on the list of the greatest men’s shot putters of all time? Unquestionably, at a minimum, very near the top.
An Inauspicious Beginning
As a child growing up in the sunny climate of Santa Monica, California, young Parry’s introduction to the shot put was inauspicious and largely accidental. When he was fourteen and as he was recuperating from a bout of mononucleosis, his parents took him on a long trip to Canada. As he regained his strength, to counter his boredom, the youngster went down to a nearby riverbed and started heaving large rocks that had been worn smooth by the rushing water. As he later described the scene, “I didn’t even know what a shot put was at that point, but I became interested in how far I could throw those stones.” Such was the beginning of the shot put career of one of the greatest champions of all time.
In high school, O’Brien focused first on football, where he played end on the Santa Monica High School team that won the 1948 California state title, and considered basketball as his secondary sport. As all varsity football players at his high school were required to participate in track and field in the spring, and as the larger athletes were told to gravitate to the throwing events, he became a shot putter and discus thrower almost by default. He showed the ability, however, that he had first uncovered on the riverbank in Canada, finishing third in the California state meet in the standard twelve-pound shot put, but first in the competition utilizing the international sixteen-pound shot.
He went to the University of Southern California on a football scholarship, majoring in business administration, but his experience on the freshman team spurred him to move his primary attention to the track program. In football practice one day that first year at USC, O’Brien was kicked in the stomach and tore some muscles in his mid-section, causing extreme pain any time he engaged his core muscles. The coach of the freshman team “taught football like it was war,” and the varsity coach was little different. “Between the two of them,” he later explained, “I about lost interest in the game.” While working out with the track team the following spring, O’Brien met Wilbur Thompson, a USC alumnus who had retired from track and field after winning the Olympic gold medal at the 1948 London Games. Thompson saw untapped potential in the young athlete and suggested that O’Brien focus strictly on the shot put and discus. Given his most recent football experience, that was the final impetus for O’Brien to ask that his football scholarship be changed to track, something possible in the early 1950s that would be virtually unheard of in more modern times.
He had great success during his freshman year, ineligible from varsity competitions because of NCAA rules and setting a national freshman collegiate record of 53-10. With focused dedication and hard work, and an almost scientific, analytical approach to training and technique, O’Brien made significant progress during his sophomore season, the year in which he truly came into prominence.
Weight Training and Shot Put Dominance
As a pillar of his success, he simply refused to be outworked by his rivals. As an example, at the Fresno Relays that spring, he was defeated by Otis Chandler, a talented thrower who would later become the publisher of the Los Angeles Times. After the meet, O’Brien returned to his home in Santa Monica. Around 3:00 a.m. the next morning, his father was jolted awake by the sound of a grunting athlete followed by the thud of a large metal ball landing on the turf. His son was practicing in a vacant lot next to the family home, a nearby streetlight providing just enough illumination to allow an impromptu training session. When his father went out to check on him, young Parry said, “Dad, look what I’ve found.” What he had found was a simple rotation of his body at the back of the ring, a technical change he would continue to explore and one that would eventually revolutionize the event.
In addition to providing the impetus for this middle-of-the-night practice, Otis Chandler influenced Parry O’Brien in a much more substantive way. As a Stanford athlete, Chandler had experienced great success as a shot putter, finishing as high as second at the NCAA Championships. A key to his success had been his devotion to weightlifting, a training technique that, due in large part to commonly held misconceptions, had not gained wide acceptance among athletes and coaches. As Chandler later reflected, “In those days, if you wanted to lift weights, you literally had to do it when the coach wasn’t watching. Coaches associated weightlifting with body-beautiful stuff.” As he continued, “Parry, like a lot of other athletes, believed weightlifting would make you so muscle-bound you couldn’t move. I said, ‘Look, I’m not a natural at this, but you are. Come on, lift weights. Get stronger.’” O’Brien followed that advice, began an intense program of weight training, watched his weight increase from 210 to 240, and could eventually credit this new training modality in part for his success and the length of his successful career.
Jim Fuchs was a Yale athlete who would win two Olympic bronze medals and was the top shot putter in the world between the 1948 and 1952 Olympics. Fuchs avoided weightlifting and set multiple world records largely with his speed and raw athleticism; he would be the last to do so. As he reflected after his career had ended, “I didn’t believe in weight training then, and I didn’t know many shotputters who did, other than (Otis) Chandler. I competed at around 212 pounds. I probably could have gotten up to 260 with weights.”
Parry O’Brien would combine intense weight training with a driven work ethic, an intense competitive spirit, and an openness to innovation to dominate men’s shot putting for most of the next decade.
The “O’Brien Glide”
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the predominant technique in the shot put was a sort of “hop” motion. With this action, a version of which had been utilized since Ralph Rose set world records in the early 1900s, a right-handed athlete began the throw at the back of the circle with his right shoulder (and the shot cradled on the neck) facing the back of the ring. From there, he raised his left leg and brought it close to his body, and then thrust that leg toward the toe board. With his body open and facing the right side of the circle, he briefly paused in the middle of the ring to gather himself and then completed the throw with around a ninety-degree turn of the upper body.
As weight training was almost universally eschewed by top coaches, the best throwers relied on speed, athleticism, and natural explosiveness to generate greater distance. If they were large throwers, they had been naturally born large and if muscular, they had gained such a physique naturally or through manual labor. As an example, Charles Fonville of Michigan was 6-2 and only 195 when in 1948 he threw 58-¾ to break a long-standing world record. Rather than relying on strength and raw power, Fonville used natural quickness and explosiveness as well as impeccable form to establish what at the time was considered an impressive standard.
Parry O’Brien began his career utilizing the traditional “hop” technique, with significant success. But the young athlete had a critical mind and was open to new training methods and technical changes that would enhance his performance. In 1951, his first year of varsity competition, he lost the NCAA shot put title by one inch to one of his greatest rivals at the time, Darrow Hooper of Texas A&M. A week later, at his first national AAU championship meet, he defeated world record-holder Jim Fuchs for his first of many national titles. With that performance, he qualified for a European tour that included a series of meets with little rest in between. O’Brien had been experimenting with a major technical change, one that would rotate his body ninety degrees compared to the “hop” technique, positioning him with his back to the throwing sector at the beginning of the throw. He came to believe that such a change in technique would result in longer throws but realized that such a radical adjustment would come with distinct risks. The impetus for O’Brien to pursue that change came on that initial European tour.
As he explained why he implemented such a significant technical change, “About a month into the tour I was getting fatigued. We were competing three or four days a week, and I was looking for an easier way to throw the shot. So instead of the conventional side-saddle hop, in which you sort of straddled across the side of the ring, I was looking for an easier but just as effective alternative. Little by little, degree by degree, I turned around with my back to the throwing area.” He believed it was a more efficient method of throwing, but he also believed the laws of physics worked to put greater force behind the shot utilizing his new technique. “The longer you push,” he surmised, “the more speed and momentum you are going to gather and the farther you are going to throw.”
Technical change in track and field can be challenging to implement, and shot put experts around the world were skeptical of the subtle but still radical change Parry O’Brien was beginning to put into place during that European tour. As he later recalled, “I was severely criticized by German coaches and other experts who said it wasn’t natural for the body to go that way, and it was too unorthodox to succeed.” But he believed his level of performance would be limited should he continue with the traditional technique widely in use at the time. “I was thoroughly convinced that with the orthodox method I was, and always would be, no better than a 56-foot shot putter. I was certain that I could not achieve the kind of marks I had in mind—59 and 60 feet—with this orthodox technique.”
As he continued, demonstrating the long-range, analytical thought process he devoted to this major change, “. . . the so-called experts of the day claimed that with an Olympic year approaching I was crazy to defy principles that had been proven over the years. But I fully believed that I was on the right track—at least for me—to contribute something to the sport while at the same time approaching world-class standards.” For the 1952 season, O’Brien decided to go all-in with this new technique. The rest, as they say, is history, and the “O’Brien glide,” as it became known, would be the predominant shot put technique for the next four decades.
First Gold Medal – Helsinki 1952
After perfecting this new technique, Parry O’Brien’s rise to the top of the shot put world was rapid. In a rematch with Darrow Hooper at the NCAA Championships, he avenged his narrow loss to the Texas A&M thrower with a new meet record that won by almost three feet. A week later at the AAU Championships, he defended his title with a narrow win over Jim Fuchs, the world record-holder. Then at the Olympic Trials in the Los Angeles Coliseum, in the first round, Hooper exploded with a formidable 57-1⅜, surpassing his previous best by two feet. O’Brien desperately wanted to win the Trials but could reach only 57-0½ in the fourth round to finish less than an inch behind his new arch-rival. Jim Fuchs finished third to round out the team heading to Helsinki.
As the three American throwers entered the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki a few weeks later, collectively the favorites to sweep the medals, each athlete had a different concern on his mind. Darrow Hooper had far exceeded his personal best to win the Olympic Trials and wondered if he could reach that level of performance on the largest, most pressure-packed stage in amateur athletics.
Jim Fuchs had a different set of concerns, needing to overcome a couple of untimely injuries as he hoped to add a gold medal to the bronze he had won four years earlier in London. In the years since that 1948 performance, he had dominated the event, in one fourteen-month stretch prevailing in eighty-eight consecutive competitions and setting four world records. But his dominance had been hindered not only by the rise of O’Brien and Hooper but also by recent injuries that greatly impacted his throwing motion. Seven weeks earlier, he had strained ligaments in his right ankle, critical to each phase of the throwing motion. Though he made no excuses, that injury had impacted his performance at both the AAU Championships and the Olympic Trials, competitions in which he had finished an unexpected third. Then while training after arriving in Helsinki, he had strained a tendon in his throwing hand. Despite extensive taping on his hand, he felt pain with each throw. A year earlier, Jim Fuchs had been considered a heavy favorite to win the Olympic title; now he simply wanted to be able to throw without pain.
For his part, Parry O’Brien was concerned about the weather. As the throwers went through their warmup routines, the USC Trojan noted the dark clouds hovering over the stadium. The analytical athlete decided to “put everything I had into my first try. I could see it might rain.” Keenly focused on having worked himself into the competitive frenzied state that would become his trademark, for his initial attempt, O’Brien positioned himself at the rear of the circle with his back to the throwing sector. Moving quickly across the ring, in a fierce but controlled motion, he reached 57-1⅜, a new Olympic record.
O’Brien’s weather forecasting had been spot-on, and the rains soon came, hindering all performers as they struggled to match the leader’s first-round effort. Jim Fuchs fouled on four of his six throws and finished third, winning his second bronze medal. Though precariously positioned in the silver medal position, Darrow Hooper could not approach O’Brien’s performance, at least through the first five rounds. Then on his last attempt, Hooper exploded with a throw many in the crowd believed had exceeded O’Brien’s first-round effort. It was close, but the measurement showed the throw was two centimeters short of the Olympic title. Continuing the trend from earlier in the season, twenty-year-old Parry O’Brien had defeated Darrow Hooper by less than an inch to win his first gold medal.
Dominance and the First 60-Foot Throw
What followed was one of the most dominant stretches in the history of the men’s shot put event. After easily defeating Hooper by over two feet to win his second NCAA title in 1953, O’Brien won his third consecutive AAU championship, this one by almost three feet. He defended his title in 1954 (by nearly five feet) and 1955 (by almost two feet). After setting new AAU meet records in 1952, 1953, and 1954, he would again win with meet records in 1958, 1959, and 1960, his last national title.
Between 1952 and 1956, Parry O’Brien won 116 consecutive shot put competitions, a record winning streak in track and field that would not be broken until 1986 when legendary hurdle star Edwin Moses won his 117th consecutive race.
In a long career, O’Brien broke the world shot put record sixteen times. In the first, at the West Coast Relays in Fresno in 1953, he broke Jim Fuchs’s long-standing mark with a throw of 59-¾. But his most famous world standard was set the following year.
In the 1950s, dual track meets between UCLA and USC were major events, and the 1953 version included an added open shot put competition that included the world record-holder, now a former Trojan. By this point in his career, O’Brien was dominating the event, facing competition primarily from himself. Then events on two continents served up added motivation
Two days before the USC-UCLA dual meet at the Los Angeles Coliseum, the most iconic “barrier” in track and field was famously shattered. On an otherwise nondescript track in Oxford, England, Roger Bannister ran 3:59.4 to become the first athlete to break four minutes for the mile run. O’Brien had been incrementally extending the shot put world record, two inches here and five inches there, but he had not been able to reach the sixty-foot line, at the time the shot put version of the four-minute mile.
More impactful on O’Brien’s motivation was news of an impressive performance by shot putter Stan Lampert, a former New York University athlete. At a meet in New Jersey, Lampert had surprised the track and field world with a toss of 59-5⅞, a mark exceeded only by O’Brien’s not yet ratified record of 59-9¾. Suddenly not only did Parry O’Brien have a worthy competitor, but now his world record was being threatened. As he reflected, “I could just see all my records going down the tubes.”
It provided the spark the twenty-two-year-old needed. On a cloudy day with cool conditions that were less than ideal, O’Brien later said he was a little tense entering the competition; it didn’t show. He had placed on the ground near the shot put circle a small board on which he had written, “59-5⅞, Stan Lampert.”
Amped up, he fouled his first throw. On his second attempt, his famous competitive focus returned, and the shot landed 60-5¼ away, the first sixty-foot throw in history. His six-throw series concluded with throws of 60-¼, 59-10¼, foul (measured at 59-10), and 58-10¾. In addition to throwing sixty feet, he had exceeded his old record three times. When asked afterward if Bannister’s mile record had provided additional motivation, O’Brien replied, “Not too much, just a little.” But then he expanded, stating, “Yes, I was mentally up. I knew I was up for it. Then Stan Lampert’s big mark last week also gave me a lift.”
O’Brien was a fierce competitor and thrived on his dominance. As he explained, “I didn’t like to lose, and whenever I did, I wanted to do something about it as soon as possible.” His winning streak came to an end at the 1956 AAU championships when he, as he later recalled, “had a case of the flu and shouldn’t have competed,” and was narrowly defeated by Ken Bantum for the title. As he continued, “I was so upset by the loss that I literally drove myself into a competitive frenzy.” The following weekend at the Olympic Trials, he easily defeated Bantum by nearly one-and-a-half feet. Joining O’Brien and Bantum on the team heading to Melbourne was Bill Nieder, an up-and-coming Kansas Jayhawk thrower who had overcome a knee injury to finish third.
Becoming a Two-Time Gold Medalist – Melbourne 1956
Given that the Melbourne Olympics were the first conducted in the southern hemisphere, the two-week event was scheduled for late November to take advantage of late spring conditions in Australia. A challenge for the AAU and the United States Olympic Committee was dealing with the five months between the Olympic Trials in late June and the actual Olympics. In essence, the three best athletes in any event as determined in June might not be the three best when the Games occurred in November. To assist athletes in maintaining their competitive edge, training camps and a series of competitions were conducted. The last meet before the team left for Australia occurred four weeks before the date of the Olympic shot put. In this last pre-Olympic meet, Parry O’Brien demonstrated why he was considered by many to be the most prohibitive favorite to win a track and field gold medal.
As he stepped into the ring in the Los Angeles Coliseum, O’Brien had broken the world record eleven times, but on this day, he would complete what Cordner Nelson of Track and Field News labeled “the greatest series of marks anyone had ever accomplished in track and field.” Entering this warm-up meet, he had upped the world record to 62-6⅜ two months earlier. At this last competition before flying to his second Olympics, Parry O’Brien laid down a phenomenal series of 62-½, 62-2½, 62-8 (his twelfth world record), 62-5¾, 63-2 (his thirteenth world record), and 62-1. He had moved his personal best to a level that bettered the next best thrower by nearly three feet. By every indication, he was primed to defend his Olympic title.
The Melbourne Cricket Ground, which served as the Olympic Stadium and venue for the track and field competition, was an enormous circular structure that seated more than 100,000 spectators. Due to the size and shape of the stadium, most of those spectators were seated a great distance from the track that had been constructed in the middle, creating an oddly detached atmosphere for the athletes.
Parry O’Brien seemed ready, but as he reflected later, “At Melbourne, I peaked a little early,” referring to the multiple world records he set in the months between the Olympic Trials and the Games. And as he shared after the competition, “You wouldn’t think I’d be nervous, but man, I really was.”
His nervousness showed on his initial attempt as the shot slipped off his hand and traveled 58-9½, sub-par for the world record-holder but long enough to break his Olympic record from four years earlier. As he explained, “The shots were new and there was nothing to grip on.” Despite the unfamiliar implements, he broke the Olympic record two more times, including a fifth-round toss of 60-11⅛ which was his winning mark. Never pressed throughout the competition, Parry O’Brien was a two-time gold medalist.
Bill Nieder reached 59-7 in the fifth round to easily secure the silver medal. Ken Bantum struggled, fouling three of his six attempts and reaching a modest 57-4 in the fourth round. But the American was edged out of the bronze medal by the Czech athlete, Jiri Skobla, who threw 57-10.
With this relatively easy if unspectacular win, Parry O’Brien became the first shot putter to defend his Olympic title since Ralph Rose won his second gold medal forty-eight years earlier.
“M.A.” and “P.A.” – In Search of Any Advantage
Most athletes after winning a second Olympic title would consider retirement. But O’Brien, now a twenty-four-year-old Air Force Lieutenant, thrived on competition and gave little serious thought to leaving the sport; he would compete through two more Olympic cycles.
For 1957, though, he shifted his focus to the discus, competing minimally in the shot put. He reached a personal best discus throw of 183-3, a very solid performance. In the Track and Field News annual world rankings, he was top-ranked in the discus and second-ranked in the shot put, having been defeated by Bill Nieder in one of his few competitions in that event that year. Such high rankings in two completely different events, a rarity in any era, is a testament to Parry O’Brien’s athletic ability and competitive drive.
That competitive drive and the dominance that he demonstrated throughout the 1950s resulted from many factors. To O’Brien, his success resulted from a combination of what he called “M.A.” (“mental attitude”) and “P.A.” (“physical aptitude”). To further develop his physical aptitude, he completed long, grueling weight workouts and extended throwing sessions. Those throwing sessions regularly included at least 150 throws, each of which had to exceed a pre-determined distance. As he once suggested, “I don’t quit until my hands bleed, and that’s the God’s truth.” He simply refused to be outworked by his rivals.
But like with his quest for improvements in technique and training, O’Brien’s pursuit of ways to improve his mental approach to his event was truly cutting edge. He studied yoga and other Eastern approaches to wellness like Ayurveda, something unheard of among world-class athletes in the 1950s. He explored self-hypnosis and listened in his sleep to tape-recorded motivational messages he had recorded. “I’d record pep talks to myself,” he suggested. “I’d put the tape player under my bed, get into a sleepy state, and let it all sink into my subconscious.” These subliminal messages included, “Keep low, keep back, keep your movement fast across the circle. Fast, now! Fast! Fast! Fast! And beat them! Beat them all!” O’Brien was convinced these night-time messages added distance to his throws.
As he later reflected, “When I was competing regularly, I didn’t do a lot of conscious psyching out of my opponents.” Conscious or not, his antics designed to “psych up” himself had the opposite effect on his opponents. Particularly at the peak of his career, O’Brien projected an air of invincibility. Even Randy Matson, who encountered O’Brien as the older athlete’s career was nearing an end, experienced this effect. “There was always a feeling with Parry that if you didn’t get an early throw way out there, he was going to beat you. If it was close and it came down to his last couple of throws, he almost always won.”
O’Brien during a competition was a sight to behold, whipping himself into a competitive frenzy, stalking around the area near the throwing circle, and ignoring the other athletes as they competed. Dave Davis, a former USC thrower who competed for a spot on the 1960 Olympic team, minced no words when describing what it was like to compete against O’Brien. “Sure, it bothers me to compete against him,” Davis offered. “He makes it that way on purpose, He puts and then he walks away and ignores you. You feel the other guys looking at you when you’re getting ready to put, but not O’Brien. He acts like he’s the only one there. You know he’s not worried about you. Maybe he’ll drop a shot or something while you’re balancing. He bugs me.” Purposefully or not, Parry O’Brien had planted himself in Dave Davis’s psyche, and likely that of most of his other rivals.
Furthering the psychological effect, O’Brien described his typical warmup attire. “I always wore two sweatsuits, which I would gradually peel off during my warm-ups. If I immediately threw long, my opponents would think, ‘My God, how can I beat him when he’s throwing it that far with two sweatsuits on?’” Regarding another tactic he used during warm-ups to psyche out the competition, he offered, “I would also stand at the side of the circle and do standing throws well over the last line in the competition. This was not true distance, but it would kick up chalk at that far distance, and there would be a lot of oohs and aahs from the stands. That also demoralized the competition if they were spending too much time watching what I was doing.”
Jim Bush, the long-time UCLA coach who ended his career at USC, said of O’Brien, “Parry was a tough guy to get to know, but he was really a bear in competition.” But then he added regarding another practice O’Brien used to his advantage, “And then there was that little bottle he always brought to the meets. That bothered a lot of the competitors.” O’Brien always brought with him a little white plastic bottle that he would very visibly swig on before and throughout competitions. When he was asked what was in the bottle, he would always say, “‘It’s an energy-giving substance.’ I didn’t say anything else, and I always offered it to anyone who wanted to test it. They were all afraid to try it because they thought it must be something very high-powered.” To many of his rivals, the little white bottle contained some sort of powerful elixir that furthered O’Brien’s competitive advantage. In reality, it was clover honey diluted with water, an “energy-giving substance,” once metabolized in the body, but no powerful elixir, at least physically. As O’Brien explained, “. . . it gave me a tremendous psychological advantage over those who were paying too much attention to what O’Brien was doing instead of worrying about their own performances.”
Seeking a Third Gold Medal – Rome 1960
Time inevitably catches up with any athlete who extends his or her career long enough, and Parry O’Brien was no exception. After ranking second behind Bill Nieder for his discus-focused 1957 season, O’Brien was top-ranked in 1958 and 1959. But that pre-Olympic year would be the last in which the two-time gold medalist stood atop the shot put world. In the runup to the Rome Olympics, it wasn’t that O’Brien’s performance level was declining; he continued to improve and set another world record in 1959. As inevitably occurs, his rivals simply caught up with and surpassed him, completing an onslaught of their own as they repeatedly raised the world record to new levels.
Those rivals were Dave Davis, Dallas Long, and Bill Nieder, and the rivalry of this trio with Parry O’Brien would be among the most personal in the history of the shot put event.
Like his rival Parry O’Brien, Davis grew up in the Los Angeles area, setting a national record in the scholastic shot put. Also like O’Brien, Davis enrolled at USC but ultimately left school to focus on throwing. As legendary USC coach Jess Mortenson explained, “All Dave wants to do is eat, sleep, and lift weights and put the shot.” Regarding Davis leaving USC due to earning an insufficient number of credits, the coach continued, “. . . I think he wanted to get back home where he could devote all of his time to lifting and putting the shot.”
And also like O’Brien, Dave Davis utilized weight training as a core component of his training. In fact, among the four top throwers in 1960, Dave Davis was arguably the strongest. “I want to build up my strength,” he offered. “Strength gives me confidence.” Regarding his emphasis on weightlifting, he said, “I don’t work with the shot at all during the week. I may do a few phantom puts—kind of dream through it without a shot. What I want is to build up my strength.” In the years leading up to the 1960 Olympics, Davis used his weight lifting regimen to increase his weight by nearly sixty solid pounds.
In the end, Dave Davis would travel to Rome for the Olympics, but through an odd sequence of events, would not actually compete. And of the top four throwers in 1960, he would be the only one to never win a gold medal.
The most intriguing talent in the leadup to the Rome Games was Dallas Long. As a high schooler, he competed at North Phoenix High School for Coach Vern Wolfe, who would in time succeed Jess Mortenson as the track coach at USC. As a high school coach, Wolfe gained a reputation as an innovator, and in no area was he more innovative than with his early emphasis on weight training. As he later reflected, “We didn’t know what we were doing, but we were trying to make sense of it. Calling it weight training gave it a stigma in those days because of the name, but there was a certain advantage to being where we were at the time, sort of isolated in some respects. We didn’t have people around us telling us we couldn’t do it.” His most famous athlete at North Phoenix was Dallas Long, who broke national high school records in the twelve- and sixteen-pound shot put.
In addition to completing intense weight workouts, Wolfe had Long study films of Parry O’Brien to help the young thrower emulate the new “glide” technique. Regarding his thoughts about O’Brien early in his career, Long would later suggest, “You might say he was a sort of hero of mine then.” And like his idol at the time, Long gave up a promising football career to focus on track and field. As his coach explained about the all-state tackle’s decision to forego his last high school football season, “It was a question of being just a good shot putter or a great one.”
As a result of his natural gifts and intense weight training, Dallas Long was like a “man-child” when he left Phoenix to enroll at the University of Southern California, following in the footsteps of Olympic champions Wilbur Thompson and Parry O’Brien. He was 6-4 and 255 lbs., with a 17½-inch neck and a 50-inch chest that made him look even larger than he was. And like O’Brien before him and Randy Matson who would follow, Long’s impact on the shot put world was immediate.
At an exhibition meet during his freshman year at USC, Long exploded with a huge 63-4 throw, two inches farther than O’Brien’s long-standing world record. The world record holder was watching from the stands, and as a testament to his competitive drive or ego, or both, O’Brien hustled down to the locker room, put on his throwing gear, entered himself in the exhibition competition, and threw almost three inches farther. As he said afterward, “I had to do it. What would people think?” The landing area was found to have an excessive slope, thus disallowing any throws from record consideration. But the potential impact of Dallas Long on Parry O’Brien’s long-standing dominance had been made clear, and O’Brien knew it. As he said at the time, “I just hope I can hold him off for another year or two, but it’s going to take some doing.” Long officially matched O’Brien’s world record just a month later, defeating O’Brien, Bill Nieder, and Dave Davis in the process.
At the young age of nineteen, the competitive future of Dallas Long seemed limitless.
The most immediate threat to Parry O’Brien’s shot put dominance as the Rome Olympics approached, however, was Bill Nieder, the silver medalist from four years earlier. The first high schooler to reach sixty feet with the twelve-pound shot and the first collegian to throw sixty feet with the sixteen-pounder, among the four top throwers in the late 1950s, Nieder’s path to Olympic glory seemed the most fraught with challenges.
After growing up in Lawrence, Kansas, Nieder traveled across town to enroll at the University of Kansas on a football and track scholarship. In his first and only varsity football game for the Jayhawks during his sophomore year in 1953, while playing linebacker and pursuing a Texas Christian University running back to the sideline, Nieder was hit from behind and a muscle in his right knee was severely torn. As he described the aftermath, “I was eight and a half hours on the table for surgery, and I was in a cast from chest to ankles for ten weeks.” He was told he would always limp when he walked, and he would never be able to flex his right knee beyond ninety degrees, a huge issue for a shot putter.
His football career over soon after it began, Bill Nieder was forced to focus his energies on the shot put, though such a devastating injury to his right leg resulted in major alterations to his shot put technique. While most world-class shot putters derive tremendous power from their legs, Nieder had to rely much more heavily on his upper body. After his injury, he began a concentrated weight program that built up his upper body while rehabbing and increasing the strength in his legs.
He utilized the glide technique that Parry O’Brien had perfected. But unlike his rival, who threw from a power position at the front of the circle with his right leg coiled and ready to provide much of the force behind the throw, Nieder could derive far less power from his legs. This lack of leg drive made it more challenging for the Jayhawk thrower to generate much height on his throws. As his coaches at Kansas told him, “You’ll never reach sixty feet if you keep throwing those line drives.” To alleviate the low trajectory of his throws, Nieder began placing an old set of pole vault standards twenty-five feet from the toe board with an old bar set at fifteen feet high. By consciously focusing on lofting the shot over the bar, in time, Nieder added needed height to his throws, and his first sixty-foot throw soon followed.
After his silver medal performance in Melbourne, Bill Nieder’s development continued incrementally, and as the 1960 Olympic season began, he was seen as a legitimate threat to dethrone Parry O’Brien as the gold medalist.
But he certainly wasn’t the only one, as a binge of world records during the pre-Olympic season suggested. As the year began, Parry O’Brien was the record holder at 63-4; it was the last of his sixteen world records. In early March of 1960, Dallas Long extended the record to 63-7 and two weeks later Bill Nieder added three inches to the world mark. A week later, shortly after Dave Davis reached 63-10½, Long increased the world’s best to 64-6½. The next month at the Texas Relays, Nieder used a borrowed shot to regain the record with a mammoth 65-7. In an event that had heretofore seen relatively small incremental record increases, in less than two months, over two feet had been added to the world record. Though many knowledgeable prognosticators believed his intense competitiveness would allow him to prevail over throwers who were reaching longer distances, O’Brien’s reign as Olympic champion and as the world’s best shot putter was clearly under siege.
Other than breaking world records, Bill Nieder, Dallas Long, and Dave Davis shared one other attribute: they each had developed a distinct dislike of Parry O’Brien. Admitting to being adversely affected by the two-time gold medalist’s antics around the shot put ring, Davis added, “It’s not so bad losing to Nieder or Long. But to O’Brien, that’s horrible.” Even the young newcomer Long, still only a teenager and known for his mild-mannered, happy-go-lucky attitude, added, “O’Brien is an outsider. He’s not one of us.”
But for none of the three contenders was the animosity toward Parry O’Brien more personal than Bill Nieder, leading one journalist to refer to the two as “the Hatfield and McCoy of American shot putters.” O’Brien was outspoken and Nieder was quick-tempered, and statements by the former about the latter often led to fireworks.
Regarding his new rivals, O’Brien offered, “This is the first time in ten years I have had competition. I hope I shall react well to it. I expect to.” As he continued, “They are all aware of the senior citizen psych. They do very well against one another or with no competition. We shall see what happens under the pressure of the big meets.” Finally, he offered, “I do not put well in practice. I save my best for competition. I am no pasture performer.”
Perhaps as an extension of this interview, O’Brien was quoted as saying, “Nieder is a cow-pasture performer. He only does well in meets where there is no competition.” As could be predicted, Bill Nieder was incensed, and the effect of that perceived insult was to help propel the former Kansas Jayhawk to performances well beyond what any other thrower in 1960 could match.
In response to O’Brien’s comments and the notion that he was averse to competing against O’Brien and the other top throwers, Nieder responded, “It burned me up. Hell, he’s avoided competition with me and Long.” On a bit of a roll, he continued, “One meet last year, Long and I were entered and O’Brien wasn’t. Then Long got the flu and I pulled a chest muscle, and O’Brien entered the meet. Another time, I beat him in a meet and he quit competing for the year. Three days before I set the record (65-7) in Austin, I was doing between 61 and 62 feet. I always throw as hard as I can in practice because that’s the only way to get the timing right. Then I read what O’Brien said and went out to practice. I was over 63 on a couple, then over 64. Up until then, I figured on 66 feet as a goal—now it’s 67.”
Simply by speaking his mind, Parry O’Brien had inadvertently lit a fire under one of his most formidable rivals. But heading into the Olympic Trials, no amount of motivation, however, could help Nieder overcome an injury to his leg.
The consensus among track prognosticators suggested that Bill Nieder and Dallas Long were virtual locks to earn Olympic berths and that Parry O’Brien and Dave Davis would battle for the third and final spot on the team. But as the athletes filed into Stanford University stadium for the finals of the Olympic Trials shot put, Bill Nieder was hobbled by a leg injury suffered in a water skiing accident. And Dave Davis was nowhere to be found.
Dallas Long dominated the competition, reaching 63-3¾ in the second round to defeat the second-place O’Brien by a foot. Clearly not up to par, Nieder could do no better than 61-9¾, almost four feet under his world record set just two months earlier.
Further complicating the proceedings was the late arrival of Dave Davis. As the throwers were starting to warm up, Davis was forty-five miles away. With few options, he paid a pilot $18 to fly him to Palo Alto harbor on San Francisco Bay. He talked a city employee into driving him to Stanford and arrived after the first two rounds of the final had been completed. When he showed up at the shot put ring, the officials administering the event made a series of decisions that were questionable at best and that clearly impacted which trio of throwers were included on the Olympic team.
Davis had missed his first two throws, and all the other athletes were in the flow of the competition. Still, Davis was allowed to take a practice throw from the ring before taking his first throw of the competition. This was a clear violation of the rules governing track and field at the time. Then he was granted all three throws in the preliminary rounds even though he had missed his first two attempts. The rules regarding this issue were less definitive, but the interpretation allowing Davis to complete all three preliminary throws was critical. He fouled his first attempt; if he had been denied the two throws he had missed, he would not have had a legal preliminary mark and would not have progressed to the final three rounds.
In round four. Davis threw 62-3½ to move past Bill Nieder into the coveted third-place slot; the hobbled Kansan could not respond. Protests were submitted on Nieder’s behalf, but to no avail; the athlete with a personal best over a foot farther than any other thrower would not be representing the United States in the Olympics.
“I was so heartbroken that I was ready to go home and never touch the shot again,” Nieder reflected a few weeks later. “I wouldn’t even report to Oregon with the Olympic squad (as an alternate). Then I thought of O’Brien. I wasn’t a cow pasture performer. I wasn’t a quitter. I decided then to join the squad and do so well in the three practice meets that I’d force my way into the Olympics.”
Nieder admittedly had little hope of gaining a spot on the team as he traveled to the Olympic training camp at the University of Oregon. But then Davis injured his wrist and struggled to reach 60 feet in the pre-Olympic meets, competitions that Nieder dominated. Then in the last warmup meet just over two weeks before the Olympic shot put competition was scheduled to occur, Nieder added three inches to his still-fresh world record, reaching 65-10. As he described the throw, “It was just like throwing a ping pong ball.”
Wanting to field the best team possible, and with Dave Davis injured and throwing poorly, the executive board of the U.S. Olympic Committee voted to empower the track and field staff to make any changes needed to bring the Olympic team to full strength. That was the only impetus needed, and suddenly Bill Nieder was on the team and Dave Davis was traveling to Rome as an alternate. “After observation of all men the past three weeks in training,” explained the track and field team manager, “it is the opinion of the administration that the injured wrist of Dave Davis will not permit him to compete up to his abilities at Rome. Therefore, Bill Nieder is substituted for Davis.” With that, the best shot putter in the world would compete for a gold medal.
Perhaps predictably, Parry O’Brien was critical of the change, believing it was unfair to Davis. Nieder responded acerbically, “O’Brien is interested only in O’Brien.” Their feud was real and would now be settled in the shot put circle in Rome.
The consensus among informed track fans had Nieder and Dallas Long battling for the gold medal, with Parry O’Brien at best a sentimental favorite. Then Long contracted food poisoning on the train ride to Rome, losing eight pounds in the process and then wilting further in the intense Roman heat. Trying to regain lost strength in the weight room, he strained his back as he tried to lift more than he could handle. Barring one of his American teammates faltering, the twenty-year-old Long would be competing for a bronze medal.
Having reigned as Olympic champion for eight years, O’Brien was not ready to relinquish the gold medal. But with Nieder now throwing more than two feet farther than O’Brien’s personal best, the two-time gold medalist sensed that it might require some special circumstances for him to pull off what most would consider a minor upset. It almost happened that way.
None of the European throwers could reach 59 feet on this day, so the medals would be distributed among the three Americans. Nieder opened with a 61-3 that broke the Olympic record from Melbourne only to have O’Brien add four inches to that record later that round. Long was well off form with his first throw, reaching only 55 feet. With his second attempt, Long improved to 61-11¼ to also break the Games record while O’Brien reached a very solid, for him, 62-8¼ to regain that record and solidify his lead. Nieder improved slightly, but with none of the three improving on his third attempt, the world record-holder was in the bronze medal position heading into the final three rounds. Then none of the three improved on his fourth attempt.
Parry O’Brien was in his competitive trance, grimly stalking around the shot put ring, speaking to no one and avoiding eye contact with his rivals. With just two throws remaining for each athlete, was it possible that O’Brien could stage an upset and win his third gold medal?
As he prepared for his fifth throw, Bill Nieder thought about the odd circumstances that resulted in him competing in Rome. He thought about how much he hated to lose to Parry O’Brien, about the “cow pasture” comment that he had found so irksome. And he thought about how he could throw almost three feet farther than his older rival. Mentally prepared, as Nieder stepped into the ring for his penultimate throw, he wasn’t thinking about the brace on his right knee. With 60,000 fans watching, he drove across the circle and completed a throw that, while not technically good, was good enough. His 64-6¾ throw, a foot farther than O’Brien had ever thrown and a brilliant effort under trying circumstances, all but wrapped up the gold medal. The two-time defending champion tried gamely on his last attempt, but his 60-3 came up short.
Dallas Long had one last throw, and despite his diminished state, he was still a threat to move up either to the gold or silver medal position. Still only a twenty-year-old college sophomore, since his high school years, Long had won far more competitions than he had lost and had most recently prevailed in the Olympic Trials. He improved by five inches on his last attempt but was still four inches behind O’Brien’s silver medal distance. “I just couldn’t get that explosion,” Long offered afterward. “Actually, the pressure was not as great as at the Final Trials.”
As his Olympic victory settled in, Bill Nieder reflected on the unpredictable journey that had brought him to the top of the medal stand in Rome. How his untimely knee injury the previous spring had contributed to his fourth-place finish at the Olympic Trials, and how the resultant sense of failure had been so devastating, at least momentarily. How he had dominated pre-Olympic competitions and set yet another world record, “forcing” himself onto the Olympic team. How he had trailed O’Brien, an athlete he genuinely disliked, going into the fifth round. And how he had funneled his energy and concentration into arguably the best throw of his career. “Through luck and good fortune, my knee seemed to get stronger after those Olympic Trials,” he later reflected. “I don’t know what caused the improvement. Maybe I was building myself up mentally. I had been called a cow pasture performer who choked in big meets and decided to try all I could to get my reputation and ego restored again.”
After the last round had been completed, O’Brien congratulated Nieder and told him he had deserved to win. But fierce competitor that he was, Parry O’Brien took no solace in adding a silver medal to his two gold medals. In a noted photo of the three after the awards ceremony, with each displaying his medal for the assembled photographers, Nieder and Long are proudly beaming and looking directly into the camera. O’Brien has a slight scowl on his face, and his eyes are directed straight at Nieder’s gold medal.
In December of 1960, Bill Nieder announced that due to what his doctors called “traumatic arthritis,” a painful and incurable condition in his right knee, he would be forced to retire from track and field. He had been told that if he continued training and competing in the shot put, with the great stress the movement placed on the right leg, the knee would fuse into a stiff joint. Only twenty-six, Nieder suggested, “I don’t exactly like the idea of going around with a stiff leg.”
In the months following his retirement, Nieder tried his hand at boxing. His career lasted for one fight, actually for one round, when he was knocked out. In time, he began training again for the shot put, altering his form to place less strain on his right knee. Even though he had received no compensation for participating in his one fight, because it was a professional bout, Nieder was stripped of his amateur status. In 1963, he applied to the Amateur Athletic Union for reinstatement but was ultimately denied. Though he would eventually regain partial eligibility to compete, his career in track and field was effectively over.
Time Marches On – Tokyo 1964
As was expected by many, Parry O’Brien announced his retirement following the Rome Olympics. Many knowledgeable observers, however, were skeptical that he would be able to stay away from training and competition. That skepticism was well-placed, as he returned to training and competition in 1961, breaking the indoor world record with a throw of 63-1½ and winning his ninth consecutive AAU indoor shot put title. Only twenty-eight but considered old by track and field standards at the time, he was ambivalent about whether he would compete in the outdoor season that summer. “I have no desire to continue and no plan or commitment,” he commented. “But I’ll continue to work out and maybe the bug will bite again.”
Of course, he did compete in the outdoor season, losing only to Dallas Long, finishing second at the national championships, and ranking third in the world. With an increasingly time-consuming banking career impacting his training schedule, O’Brien was often asked about retirement. “Quit? What for?” he responded to one questioner. “I’m as good as ever. If I had a little more time to practice, I’d show these young squirts who’s boss.” Then reverting to the analytical thinker he was known to be, he continued, “It has been medically proved that a body kept in good physical condition will not lose reflex action or stamina when it hits the thirty-year milestone. We American trackmen have discovered what other athletes have known all along. . . nobody thinks they’re washed up at a time when they are actually attaining maturity. We’ve just been quitting too soon. We haven’t realized our full potential. You may see me in Tokyo.” Unstated but fully understood by those who knew him, Parry O’Brien simply had a visceral need for competition.
So he continued, some years focusing primarily on the discus and other years on the shot put. He didn’t digress and actually improved his personal best in each event, but other established throwers like Dallas Long and newcomers like Gary Gubner and then Randy Matson simply surpassed his performance level. As D.H. Potts wrote in Track and Field News in 1961, “I’m glad to see Parry O’Brien back in the shot ring. It takes a real champ to stay in there and get licked after so many years of being unbeatable. He’ll keep Dallas Long honest.” While O’Brien, a two-time Olympic champion and three-time medalist, didn’t like finishing fourth, or third, or even second, he more readily accepted those outcomes if they allowed him to continue training and competing.
In his last season as a USC Trojan, Dallas Long in 1962 broke Bill Nieder’s world record from two years earlier. As he warmed up for the Coliseum Relays in Los Angeles, Long “knew I was going to do it tonight.” Still only twenty-one and having slimmed down to a trim 246 pounds, Long reached 65-10½ in a stellar series that averaged 64-1. After beating the fast-rising Gary Gubner and setting his third world record in the process, Long commented afterward, “I’m getting older, stronger, and faster. And it helped to have Gary Gubner in the event. I knew I would need a good one to beat him.”
Having completed his eligibility at USC and transitioned into dental school at the same university, Dallas Long significantly scaled back his competitive schedule in 1963. With his world ranking falling to sixth in 1963, there was speculation that the defending bronze medalist wouldn’t compete in Tokyo in 1964. That speculation was, of course, misplaced.
Filling the void in Long’s absence, at least partially, was the aforementioned Gary Gubner. A student at New York University, Gubner was incredibly strong and experienced his greatest athletic success in weightlifting, finishing fourth in the 1964 Olympics. In track and field, he was most successful indoors, where he broke the world record on multiple occasions. He reached his personal best in the shot put in 1962 a solid 64-11½. His Olympic weightlifting success notwithstanding, Gubner was considered a credible threat to earn a spot on the U.S. shot put team headed to Tokyo.
Then in the early 1960s, track and field followers began to hear about a unique track and field talent competing for Pampa High School in Texas. Randy Matson was a tall and lanky athlete whose slim body had not reaped the benefits of any weight training. A prodigious talent in football and especially basketball, it was in the sport of track and field that he excelled. Winning multiple Texas state titles in the shot put and discus and threatening national scholastic records in each event. Matson was one of the most heavily recruited schoolboy athletes in state history. As an indication of his incredible potential, just weeks after graduating from high school, with minimal experience with the larger, sixteen-pound shot, and having done no weight training, at the 1963 AAU national meet, Matson threw 59-1 to place fourth.
He ultimately chose Texas A&M over other schools like Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and Southern California. With its isolated location in College Station, A&M offered Matson a place to study and train with few distractions. In that environment, he thrived, adding considerable muscle to his tall frame and demonstrating great improvement in his shot put and discus performances. As the summer of 1964 approached, progressing much more rapidly than most had anticipated he would, Randy Matson was on the cusp of challenging for an Olympic gold medal. At the age of nineteen.
Though he had continued to train as his dental school schedule allowed, Dallas Long competed in his first meet in nearly a year in late August of 1963, reaching a respectable if unspectacular 62-9 in a lowkey all-comers meet. A week later against virtually no competition, he added a foot to that distance, the best throw in the world that year.
Adding further evidence that he would be the athlete to beat in Tokyo, at an indoor meet in February of 1964, Long reached 64-4 and then 64-8, beating Parry O’Brien by over a foot. Explaining his 62-3 performance, O’Brien offered, “I’m strong but haven’t had much form work.”
Long made an auspicious 1964 outdoor debut at his favorite shot put venue at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He decided to compete in this relatively lowkey meet “only because I needed some practice.” It was an amazing “practice” session, a consistent series capped by a 65-11½ throw that added an inch to his own world record from two years earlier. Reacting to this unexpected effort, Long said, “I felt like I was in the twilight zone, it came so easy.” This performance was for Dallas Long a harbinger for what was yet to occur in the Olympic year.
Back at Occidental College a month-and-half later, against virtually no competition, he extended the world best to 66-3½. His expectations for himself growing steadily higher, Long was unimpressed. “I guess it was a good put. But it didn’t feel perfect and I feel I can do better.” He would, and soon.
Somewhat lost in the hoopla surrounding Long’s record performance, Parry O’Brien improved his personal best for the first time in over four years, reaching 63-10. “The longer I’m at it the more I learn,” said the largely self-coached thirty-two-year-old. “Dallas and I help each other. I’m putting more emphasis on putting the right foot under me, as he kept telling me to do at the beginning of this year.” Nine years older than his fellow Los Angeles resident, O’Brien reflected on how his advancing age impacted his training regimen. “I don’t recuperate as fast as I did when I was younger. I have to learn how much I can recuperate, how much work I can stand without being unable to recuperate. I am more relaxed now than I used to be.”
To suggest that Randy Matson’s rise in the ranks of world-class shot putters had been meteoric in 1964 would have been no hyperbole. Ineligible as a freshman at Texas A&M to compete in varsity collegiate meets, the young nineteen-year-old had found more meaningful competition in large invitational events on the West Coast. In those competitions against the best in the world, he had finished no lower than second. As he traveled to New Jersey for just his second AAU national championship meet, he was prepared for a high finish that would position him well for the upcoming Olympic Trials. He got that and more.
Dallas Long was not throwing well, struggling with an unfamiliar Tartan surface on the shot put ring as he reached a best throw that day of 63-4¾. A nice guy who had become somewhat of an elder statesman within the throwing crowd, Long offered Matson some technical advice regarding the younger thrower’s release of the shot. Matson thanked his friendly rival and proceeded to win his first national title, reaching a personal best of 64-11 to upset Long by over one-and-a-half feet. It was the first and would be the only time in their brief rivalry that Randy Matson would defeat Dallas Long. Parry O’Brien finished third at 61-11½.
The Olympic Trials in 1964 were completed through a two-phase process. What became known as the “semi-trials” were held on Randall’s Island in New York on the first weekend in July. The top athletes from that initial competition met six weeks later in the Los Angeles Coliseum for what were called the “final trials.” Though the process remained slightly nebulous, it was intimated that the winner of the semi-trials automatically qualified for the Olympic team assuming he could demonstrate his competitive fitness at the final trials. At this latter competition, the other two members of the team would be selected.
As the semi-trials approached, Dallas Long had lost to an upstart nineteen-year-old at the AAU Championships, and he arrived at Randall’s Island ready to ensure such a loss didn’t happen again. He never trailed Matson and ultimately defeated the young Texan by two feet. Parry O’Brien was third, just ahead of Dave Davis. Assuming he showed his readiness at the final trials, Dallas Long could try to add a gold medal to his bronze from Rome, and Randy Matson and Parry O’Brien were in a position to join him in Tokyo.
The results of the AAU Championships were used to select the team that would compete against the Soviets in a dual meet in late July. The top two finishers in the shot put at the AAU, Dallas Long and Randy Matson, were pitted against two far lesser-known Russian athletes. Matson threw poorly, reaching 62-11 and finishing third. As he reflected, “For some reason, I felt like I was throwing an eighteen-pound shot rather than a sixteen.” The experience was very humbling for the young Texan, being the first American men’s shot putter to not finish first or second in a dual meet with the Soviets. “Knowing that I was the first to lose to the Russians made me want to go off and hide,” Matson later recalled. “And then Long throwing that far—I remember thinking at the time that it seemed impossible for anyone to throw the shot that distance.” A bit shell-shocked, the nineteen-year-old had just a month to get mentally prepared to earn a spot on his first Olympic team.
As Matson had referenced, Long completed a series of throws that Track and Field News co-founder Cordner Nelson called “probably the greatest single-event accomplishment in the history of track and field.” He opened with a foul that was followed in the second round by a 65-6¼ throw, a pedestrian effort on this day but one that had previously been exceeded by only one other athlete. His third effort scanned 66-9¼, adding nearly six inches to his world record. Then in the fourth round, the chiseled 6-4, 260-pound athlete released the shot with a guttural yell and watched as it landed 67-10 away. He followed that effort, which was two feet farther than any other athlete had ever thrown, with a 67-1 and a 66-5¼. With only four athletes competing, the competition progressed quickly. As a result, the large crowd in the Los Angeles Coliseum saw in quick succession the four longest shot put throws in history.
Reflecting afterward, Long said, “I thought I could beat my record but I didn’t think I could do 67 feet. I didn’t feel the adrenalin surging like I would prefer to have it, but my technique was my best ever. I honestly believe, and I don’t mean this to sound like bragging, that I can add a foot and a half this year.” Then, referring to his teammate in the US-USSR dual meet, he added, “But anything I do, Randy Matson will top in a couple of years.” He would prove to be prescient in this prognostication.
Parry O’Brien had won the first of his two gold medals twelve years earlier and had nearly won a third in Rome. But watching the performances of Dallas Long, whose world record was exactly four feet farther than O’Brien’s personal best, and the rapid development of Randy Matson, he knew he could not reasonably expect to compete for a gold medal. As his primary goal, he suggested “he would like to be the first man from the USA to make four consecutive Olympic teams,” and entering the final trials, he believed his chances of meeting that goal were good. Given his competitive experience, and the dominance of U.S. shot putters over those of the rest of the world, he believed that if he could get to Tokyo, he had a good chance to win another medal.
As the top six finishers at the semi-trials gathered back at the Los Angeles Coliseum, the greatest drama revolved around which athlete would garner the coveted third spot on the Olympic team. With his spot largely guaranteed by his win at the semi-trials, Dallas Long had trained through the meet but still won with a throw of 64-9. Randy Matson had regained his competitive edge and finished second with a 63-10 effort.
With a rather unique arrangement that apparently not all six of the athletes were aware of, only the top four athletes at the end of the first three rounds would qualify for an additional three throws. Typically, with only six entrants, all throwers would automatically proceed to the final three rounds. O’Brien was in fourth after his third throw, having reached a vulnerable 61-5. Gary Gubner entered the ring for his third-round attempt needing to somehow exceed O’Brien’s 61-5 to qualify for three more throws and knock the two-time gold medalist out of the competition. The young NYU strongman’s third throw scaled to 61-4½; by one-half inch, Parry O’Brien received three more chances to move past the resurgent Dave Davis into third place. As he said afterward, “I didn’t know they would only take four men into the finals, and it turned out that I only made it by half an inch over Gary Gubner. As long as I’ve been competing, you’d think I’d be the last one to make such an oversight, but I guess I was just too nervous.”
But O’Brien still had work to do if he was going to qualify for another Olympics. On his fourth throw, he reached 63-2, within ten inches of his personal best, to move ahead of Dave Davis by a half-foot. Knowing Davis could still overcome his best throw, O’Brien paced around the throwing sector, showing again his trademark competitive trance. On neither of his last two throws did Davis come within a foot-and-a-half of O’Brien’s best, and just like that, the two-time gold medalist had made history by qualifying for his fourth consecutive Olympic team.
Dallas Long, Randy Matson, and Parry O’Brien would be traveling to Tokyo.
Informed prognosticators, like the prediction team at Track and Field News, uniformly predicted that Dallas Long would win the gold medal and that Randy Matson would secure the silver. Third place was less clear, with some suggesting that O’Brien would win the bronze and others that Wladyslaw Komar, the Polish thrower who had increased his personal best to 63-11¾, would finish third. The consensus among the six-member team at Track and Field News predicted that O’Brien would finish third, Komar fourth, and Vilmos Varju of Hungary fifth.
In 1960, perhaps influenced by the animosity of Bill Nieder toward his older teammate, the relationship between Dallas Long and Parry O’Brien had been cold at best. In the ensuing four years, Long had matured and had become more established in the sport while O’Brien had mellowed as he came to accept that he was no longer perched at the peak of the shot put world. They had worked together off and on and went to Tokyo more as teammates than as rivals, with Randy Matson recognized as a genuine phenom who represented the future of the event. Regarding O’Brien’s prospects for winning his fourth Olympic medal, Long offered, “Parry’ll hang in there for third.”
In Tokyo, an enthusiastic crowd of around 60,000 watched as the shot put competition went largely as predicted, although for a few brief moments in the middle, the outcome seemed very much in doubt. With his first-round 64-4, Dallas Long was firmly in the gold medal position until his young teammate stepped in the ring for his third-round attempt. Randy Matson had struggled in the weeks following his win at the AAU Championships, but since arriving in the Olympic Village, he seemed to have ironed out the technical and psychological issues that had been plaguing him. His fellow athletes were buzzing about a 65-foot practice throw, and Payton Jordan, the Stanford coach who was working with field event athletes, suggested that Matson was capable in an actual competition of tacking on an additional two to three feet. The young A&M Aggie almost proved him right.
After lackluster throws in the first two rounds, Matson was precariously in third place as he stepped into the ring for his third-round attempt. Driving across the circle with his deceptive speed, he exploded and the shot landed 65-2¾ away. Just nineteen years old, Randy Matson was suddenly leading an Olympic competition by nearly a foot. In the fourth round, he added another foot to his personal best, reaching 66-3¼. He was now leading by nearly two feet and had become the new holder of the Olympic record. Heady stuff for a teenager in his first year of international competition.
Matson’s record lasted around one minute. Long had been the heir apparent to the Olympic title for the past four years, and he had made countless sacrifices while attending dental school in his quest to fulfill his gold medal dream. As physically impressive as any other thrower in the competition, Long had a long pull on the shot and let out a loud yell as he released the implement with a high arc. The throw measured 66-8½, and Dallas Long was back in the lead.
Matson was predictably shell-shocked but fought gamely to retake the lead. He fouled on his fifth attempt and his sixth and final throw reached a respectable but too short 64-4½. Dallas Long had won the Olympic title in what would be his last competition. With a seemingly unlimited competitive future ahead of him, Randy Matson had won the silver medal.
O’Brien’s original goal had been to earn a spot on his unprecedented fourth Olympic team. But once in Tokyo, his famous competitive juices kicked in and he fiercely competed for the bronze medal. Vilmos Varju was a huge Hungarian who had been considered an outside threat to challenge for a medal. But in the most pressure-packed setting in track and field, Varju performed far better than expected, in second place heading into the third round with a 63-1.
O’Brien tried gamely to catch the Hungarian. In the third round, having worked himself into his now-famous competitive frenzy, he released the shot and watched as it landed near Varju’s best mark. He stalked around the shot put ring as officials measured the throw, which at 63-0 was one inch short of the Hungarian’s best. Following O’Brien in the order, Varju reached 63-7½ shortly thereafter to solidify his position as the bronze medalist. The American didn’t come close to improving on his best mark of the day and finished in fourth. For only the second time since 1936, athletes from the United States did not sweep the Olympic men’s shot put.
It might be considered unreasonable for a thirty-two-year-old athlete to be dissatisfied with a fourth-place finish in his fourth Olympics. But of course, Parry O’Brien was not like most athletes of any age, and though he had mellowed over time, the result was a disappointment. It would be his last Olympic appearance.
End of a Long and Storied Career
O’Brien had “retired” from track and field after winning the silver medal in Rome in 1960, a respite from competition that ended up lasting just a few months. After the 1964 Olympics, he announced that he was retiring . . . from the shot put and re-focusing his training on the discus. In discussing this decision, the analytical O’Brien said, “It wasn’t a very hard decision to make. Traditionally, the careers of discus throwers last longer. Some of the greatest have hit their peak in their later 30s or early 40s. A throw of 200 feet will win a lot of meets in this country and abroad, and I have a career-best of 193-7.” For Parry O’Brien, an athlete whose competitiveness ran deep into his core, this was a change he felt was necessary to allow him to stay in the game that meant so much to him.
His focus on the discus paid dividends, and during the 1965 season, the now 33-year-old increased his personal best on multiple occasions, ultimately reaching a lifetime best of 196-10. He was tenth-ranked in the world, his first ranking in the discus since 1962.
He enjoyed his discus-focused season, and the training for that event seemed to fit better alongside his career in banking. But he was first and foremost a shot putter, a three-time Olympic medalist in that event, and arguably the greatest in history. Few should have been surprised when in late 1965 he indicated that “the bug has bit again” and that he had shifted his training back to the shot put in anticipation of the upcoming indoor season. Though his 1966 season was far from the greatest of all time, and not even the greatest of his career, it was perhaps the most amazing.
O’Brien opened the 1966 season in early January at the San Francisco Examiner Games, reaching 62-3 to defeat John McGrath, the defending AAU indoor and outdoor shot put champion. Later in the indoor season at the L.A. Times Indoor Games, he again defeated McGrath, but of greater significance was his win over the third-place finisher. In his twenty years as a shot putter, Parry O’Brien had been defeated by a non-American athlete only once, at the Tokyo Olympics when he was edged out for the bronze medal by Vilmos Varju of Hungary. On this evening in San Francisco, he defeated Varju by nearly two-and-a-half feet to avenge his only loss to a European athlete.
In mid-February, O’Brien traveled to Vancouver to compete in the Achilles Indoor Games where he tangled with Neil Steinhauer, a rising shot put star from the University of Oregon. O’Brien trailed after the Oregon Duck reached 63-3½ in the penultimate round. But the wily veteran dug deep and on his last throw reached 64-0 for the win. At the age of 34 and after retiring from the event the previous year, Parry O’Brien had thrown farther than ever before in his storied career.
Early in the outdoor season, back in his hometown for the Coliseum Relays, O’Brien extended his personal best to 64-2¾, losing only to Randy Matson in a deep field. Then two weeks later in a lowkey meet in Honolulu, he reached 64-7¼, the last time he would raise his personal best.
O’Brien ranked third in the world in the shot put in 1966, his last world ranking in any event. But at an age at which many other track and field athletes had been fully retired for a decade, Parry O’Brien had experienced an unlikely and, in many ways, incomparable breakout season. His season had been so good that he indicated he might hang around a while longer. “If I can improve at 34, there’s no reason I can’t improve at 36 . . . and that’s an Olympic year,” he offered during the heart of the 1966 season. Then, discussing possible reasons for his improvement, he suggested, “. . . having the time to train properly, and the opportunity to (practice) indoors are the main factors . . . If I continue to train, I’ll make an effort in 1968.” He credited the coaches at UCLA for allowing him to use campus facilities at night to throw indoors and weight train, both areas that had presented challenges since he had started his banking career in Los Angeles.
But as he advanced in age, Parry O’Brien had matured and had changed in his approach and demeanor, what some called his egotistical side having tempered over time. “I used to compete against the lines, but now I can throw against somebody and it’s stimulating. . . I’m in it for what I can get out of myself. I don’t need the trinkets. . . just the satisfaction of knowing I’ve produced my maximum.” It was quite a transformation for the shot putting legend. The younger Parry O’Brien, who had famously come down out of the stands to throw against Dallas Long after the young upstart had threatened his world record, had abhorred losing. The older, more mature iteration simply wanted to compete, accepting that he was no longer the best in the world.
O’Brien competed sparingly in 1967, never approaching the performance levels he had attained the previous year. Then, as the Olympic year approached, he switched back to the discus, expressing aspirations of reaching the 200-feet mark. Apparently realizing his chances of earning a spot on an unprecedented fifth Olympic team were waning, he agreed to lead a tour to Mexico City to attend the Games.
And like that, with virtually no fanfare, one of the greatest careers in track and field quietly came to an end.
But Parry O’Brien’s throwing career was not yet over. After turning fifty, in 1984 and 1985 he competed in master’s competitions in the shot put and discus. But predictably, unlike many athletes of that age who enter such competitions for camaraderie or to simply stay in shape, O’Brien approached his preparation with an intensity similar to what he had demonstrated when he was the best shot putter in the world. His goal in the “comeback” was not just to compete well, but to shatter age-group records. This was an era when the legendary Al Oerter, a four-time gold medalist in the discus, was striving to earn a spot on his fifth Olympic team. Oerter’s comeback, which included a fifteen-foot increase in his personal best in the discus, was amazing, but inevitably included many more defeats than victories. As O’Brien reflected with great candor about his own personality, “Al Oerter, who continued to compete against world-class athletes throughout his forties, has a different attitude than I do. He is not terribly concerned if he finishes ninth or nineteenth. I shudder at the thought of finishing at those levels because my ego would not permit it.”
O’Brien had kept himself in good physical condition in the years since his competitive career had ended, but he found that staying in shape was far different from being physically capable of competing at a high level in the throwing events. But he tried, devoting six months to simply preparing himself for his onslaught, at the age of 53, on the 50-55 age-group records. As he later reflected on this time in his life, “My whole personality is geared toward achievement, and the only way I can do that is to become totally immersed in what I am doing, devoting total concentration and then throwing to kill. Of course, it was myself that I almost killed trying to do this.”
While he didn’t literally almost kill himself in this process, he indicated there were times it felt that way. “I had been like a man possessed when I was competing, and I was trying to attack the masters’ with the same ferocity,” he suggested. “I was successful mentally, but my body did not always back me up.” When he had trained intensely, even in his thirties, he had found that his body bounced back sufficiently to allow him to return the next day to similarly intense activity. Such bounce-back capability was simply not present in his fifties. “In the discus or the shot, there is a compact explosion of the muscles. And the recuperative power was just not there. I was not the same guy, but my mind kept saying that I could be if I just worked a little harder. I paid for that kind of thinking.”
But as he had been throughout his career, Parry O’Brien was ultimately successful in this endeavor. Throwing the lighter implements utilized at this level of competition, he threw 58-1½ in the shot put and 185-11 in the discus. Nearly twenty years after the end of his international career, O’Brien was a record-breaking champion yet again.
Realizing his body was no longer capable of handling the training he believed he needed to be competitive in the throwing events, but also still feeling a visceral need for competition and a goal toward which he could strive, in the 1990s, O’Brien turned to masters swimming events. It is perhaps fitting that in 2007, in the middle of a 500-meter freestyle masters swimming race in the Los Angeles area, Parry O’Brien died of a heart attack; he was 75.
As O’Brien modestly offered near the end of his international career, “It’s gratifying to know I have contributed something to the sport that has done so much for me. . .”
Conclusion
In evaluating the career of this iconic athlete, how great was Parry O’Brien? Stated succinctly, amazingly great. In terms of Olympic success, O’Brien earned a spot on what was at the time an unprecedented four U.S. Olympic teams, finishing first in 1952, first in 1956, second in 1960, and fourth in 1964. No other shot putter since Ralph Rose, competing when the event and Olympics were both in their infancy, has approached such a stellar Olympic record. Regarding the world championships, O’Brien’s career ended nearly two decades before the first of these meets in 1983.
In comparing his level of performance to that of his contemporary rivals, O’Brien won seventeen national indoor and outdoor AAU shot put titles. He broke the world shot put record sixteen times between 1953 and his last record-breaking performance in 1960, giving him more world records than any other track and field athlete in any event to that point in time. Between 1951 and 1966, in the prestigious Track and Field News annual world rankings, he was top-ranked in the shot put seven times and second-ranked three times. During this span, he was ranked in the top ten every year except 1965, after he had momentarily retired from the shot put to focus on the discus. In fact, in the first nineteen years of the publication, scored on a descending basis (1st = 10 points, 10th = 1 point, etc.), Parry O’Brien scored more points in a single event than any other athlete. Though this status has since been surpassed, most notably by Carl Lewis in the long jump, it is a prime indication of his lengthy dominance of the shot put event. Though he never consistently outdistanced his closest rivals like Randy Matson was able to do in 1965 and 1966, O’Brien’s supremacy was lengthier and, due in large part to his keen competitiveness, just as profound.
But it is in the area of longevity where Parry O’Brien’s career is perhaps most amazing. He was world-ranked over a span of fourteen years, a most impressive period during the amateur era in which he competed. And he was a legitimate medal threat through four Olympic cycles. But perhaps most notably, he set his last personal best in the shot put in 1966 at the age of 34, an ancient age for shot putters in the 1960s and nearly twenty years after his first competition in the event.
Few athletes can claim as profound an influence on a track and field event as Parry O’Brien. He was the first of the truly great shot putters to adopt weightlifting as a primary training modality; every world record holder and Olympic champion after him has dedicated a significant portion of his training to such a practice. He revolutionized the psychological component of athletics, the “M.A.” or “mental attitude,” as he called it. O’Brien researched psychology, practiced yoga and meditation, and studied Eastern philosophies to gain a competitive edge. And most of his rivals would have confirmed that he was among the fiercest competitors they ever faced.
It was this inquisitive and analytical mind that led him to his most significant contribution to the event. Through experimentation and the application of the laws of physics, he gradually and incrementally turned his body until he had rotated a full ninety degrees and was facing directly opposite the throwing sector at the beginning of the throwing motion. A subtle change, yes, but one that truly revolutionized the event. From 1952 in Helsinki through 1992 in Barcelona, the Olympic champion in the men’s shot put utilized what became known as the “O’Brien Glide,” and recent Olympic champions in the women’s shot put, athletes like Valerie Adams, Michelle Carter, and Gong Lijiao, still utilize that technique.
Regarding performance-enhancing drugs, O’Brien emphatically claims he never used them, and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. Steroids were legal when he was competing, and though they were not yet prevalent in track and field through most of his career, they were increasingly available in bodybuilding gyms and other similar venues. As he later reflected, “I had certainly heard about them (steroids). But nobody understood the side effects. There were rumors about possible damage to kidneys, the urinary tract, and even sexual organs. So I stayed away from them. . . I was not interested in being a chemical guinea pig for anybody.”
So is Parry O’Brien the greatest men’s shot putter of all time, at least of the pre-Ryan Crouser era? In the opinion of this author, the answer is unquestionably yes. But Crouser, the young Oregonian and former Texas Longhorn, is with each incredible performance making a stronger and stronger case that he is deserving of that title.
References
Associated Press, 1954, “O’Brien Betters 60 Ft. in Shot Put,” The New York Times, May 9, 1954
Associated Press, 1960, “Nieder to Retire as a Shot Putter,” The New York Times, December 16, 1960
Associated Press, 1986, “117th in a Row for Moses,” The New York Times, August 20, 1986
Bateman, Hal, 1960, “On Your Marks” Track and Field News, December 1960
Bateman, Hal, 1961, “On Your Marks” Track and Field News, March 1961
Carlson, Lewis and Fogarty, John, 1987, Tales of Gold, Chicago: Contemporary Books,1987
Daley, Arthur, 1960, “Solid Favorite,” The New York Times, January 20, 1960
Daley, Arthur, 1960, “In On a Raincheck,” The New York Times, August 31, 1960
Danzig, Allison, 1952, “Coach Satisfied as U.S. Olympic Track Team Holds Lively Workout,” The New York Times, July 15, 1952
Doherty, Ken, 1976, Track and Field Omnibook, Los Altos, California: Tafnews Press,1976
Drake, Dick, 1964, “U.S. Report” Track and Field News, June 1964
Drake, Dick, 1965, “On Your Marks,” Track and Field News, December 1965
Gustkey, Earl, 1964, “Parry and Thrust: Two Days After Bannister Broke Four Minutes in Mile, O’Brien Broke 60 Feet in
Shot,” Los Angeles Times, May 8, 1994
Errota, Fran, 1964, “Long, Matson Supreme,” Track and Field News, October/November 1964
Litsky, Frank, 2000, “Vern Wolfe, a Track Coach and Innovator, is Dead at 78,” The New York Times, October 27, 2000
Litsky, Frank, 2007, “Parry O’Brien, Pioneer in Shot-Putting Technique, Dies at 75,” The New York Times, April 23, 2007
Maraniss, David, 2008, Rome 1960, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008
Masin, Herman, 2007, “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World,” Coach and Athletic Director, August 2007
Maule, Tex, 1960, “The Shot Put Explosion,” Sports Illustrated, April 25, 1960
Nelson, Bert, 1962, “Oerter, Long Sparkle,” Track and Field News, May 1962
Nelson, Bert, 1964, “Long Puts 64-4, 64-8,” Track and Field News, February 1964
Nelson, Cordner, 1960, “Nieder Comes Through” Track and Field News, September 1960
Nelson, Cordner, 1964, “U.S. Swamps Soviets” Track and Field News, August 1964
Nelson, Cordner, 1964, “Which 3 Shot Putters?” Track and Field News, August 1964
Nelson, Cordner, 1964, “Boston 27-10 ¼w, 27-4 ¼,” Track and Field News, September 1964
Nelson, Cordner, 1966, “Parry: The Great Master,” Track and Field News, April 1966
Nelson, Cordner, 1970, Track and Field: The Great Ones, London: Pelham Books,1970
Noden, Merrel, 1997, “Shot Put Champion Parry O’Brien,” Sports Illustrated, August 18, 1997
Potts, D.H., 1961, “U.S. Report” Track and Field News, June 1961
Sheehan, Joseph M., 1960, “Kansas Hot Shot Reaches Shot-Put Stratosphere,” The New York Times, April 21, 1960
Sheehan, Joseph M., 1960, “Nieder to Put Shot in Olympics,” The New York Times, August 14, 1960
Stowers, Carlton, 1971, The Randy Matson Story, Los Altos, California: Tafnews Press,1971
Time, 1959, “Sport: Long Put,” April 27, 1959
Time, 1956, “The Great White Whale,” December 3, 1956
Time, 1960, “Sport: The Angry Whales,” May 9, 1960
Track and Field News, 1963, “Quotable Quotes,” February 1963
Track and Field News, 1964, “65-11 ½ for Long in Debut” April 1964
Track and Field News, 1964, “Quotable Quotes” August 1964
Track and Field News, 1964, “Shot Put – ‘Parry’ll Hang in There” September 1964
Track and Field News, 1965, “Quotable Quotes” April 1965
Track and Field News, 1966, “Quotable Quotes” June 1966
United Press International, 1952, “Stone and Moore Set U.S. Records in Final Tryouts for Olympic Track Team,” The New York Times, June 28, 1952
Copyright 2022 by Rob Leachman – All Rights Reserved
