Tom Walsh and Jacko Gill turned in heavyweight performances in the qualifying round of the shot put today.
Both shot putters qualified for the final on their second throw.
Walsh, a bronze medallist at the last two Olympics, threw 20.65m and 21.48m. Gill, ninth at the last two Olympics, threw 21.14m and 21.35m, which was right on the automatic qualifying distance.
The New Zealanders qualified fifth and sixth for the final.
Ryan Crouser, who has dominated the shot put for several years, hardly took his tracksuit top off before he effortlessly threw 21.49m on his first attempt.
But the biggest throw in qualifying was by Italian Leonardo Fabbri, who’d had a bad throw and a foul and was facing elimination. He then uncorked a 21.76m effort to go to the head of the field.
It was nice to see the two New Zealanders congratulating each other and smiling after they’d done the business.
Walsh was very pleased with how things turned out.
“Yep, really happy,” he said. “My first throw was tight and short. I wanted to commit to the second one and stay long through it and that’s exactly what I did. Today was all about qualifying and now that’s ticked off.”