TOKYO – Valarie Allman won the gold medal in women’s discus on Monday, the first gold in track and field for the U.S. team at the Tokyo Olympics.
It’s the first discus medal won by an American woman in the event since 2008. Allman won with a throw of 226 feet, 3 inches to beat Germany’s Kristin Pudenz (219-4), who took silver. Cuba’s Yaime Perez won the bronze.
Allman’s road to becoming an Olympic gold medalist started with some dancing and spaghetti.
When Allman was younger, she spent a year traveling the U.S. as part of the “The Pulse on Tour,” a dance program put on by the choreographers for the television show “So You Think You Can Dance.”
But as a teenager at Silver Creek High School in Longmont, Colorado, while Allman still enjoyed dancing, she didn’t want to immerse herself in it anymore.
Then the spaghetti dinner happened.
The throwers at Silver Creek High School convinced Allman to come to their annual spaghetti dinner. But there was a caveat.
“They said anybody that came to try throwing could come to the dinner,” Allman said.
Allman agreed to the terms. She went out and tried throwing the discus and instantly found a knack for it. Her history as a dancer made it somewhat of a seamless transition inside the discus circle.
“I went and tried it and had a knack for it. I kind of fell in love with the event. There’s a poetic movement to it that has really helped when I first started, and it’s became such a passion every sense,” Allman said. “It’s a combination of grace, strength, balance, having an awareness of your body and being able to move it with force. That’s mainly what discus throwing is.”
Allman didn’t need much time to excel; she was the 2013 high school national leader in the discus. She accepted a college scholarship to Stanford, where she would become a school record holder and six-time All-American.
As a professional, she’s steadily climbed up the world rankings. She placed seventh at the 2019 World Championships, throwing 202 feet, 10 inches.
“I improved over time. I found that I would make it to the next echelon and get humbled, but for me that was really motivating,” Allman said.
Since finishing a “humbling” seventh in the world, Allman bettered her world championship mark by nearly 30 feet. She threw an American record 230 feet, 2 inches in 2020. She later won this year’s Olympic trials with a throw of 229 feet, 5 inches.
Roughly a month and a half later, she’s now an Olympic champion. She is the first American woman to win gold in the discus since Stephanie Brown Trafton in 2008.
“Stephanie Brown Trafton is somebody that I’ve admired and looked up to. She was throwing crazy when I first got into the sport,” Allman said. “To build on a legacy that’s been rare in the United States would be an honor.”
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