PARIS — Ethan Katzberg stepped into the circle, facial hair on point, flung the hammer 84.12 metres, and might as well have walked over to the podium and sat down on the top step.
It was all over before it started.
Katzberg, the hirsute 22-year-old from Nanaimo, B.C., obliterated the Olympic hammer throw field on Sunday at Stade de France, to win Canada’s first ever gold medal in the event.
It wasn’t remotely close. Bence Halasz of Hungary was in the neighbourhood, but he managed just 79.97 metres to collect a silver medal. Mykhaylo Kokhan of Ukraine won bronze with a heave of 79.39 metres.
Katzberg stood out, just as he did at the 2023 worlds in Budapest, where he won. Just as he has at his last dozen meets, which he won. He opened the season at 84.38 metres, a mark that still stands as the world’s best this year.
He’s untouchable.
“He really trained hard over the winter,” his coach Dylan Armstrong said in May. “We did some great things together. There were some indicators in training. I thought maybe not that large of a number, but we don’t really put a limit on Ethan. We don’t talk numbers. We don’t set goals as far as distance. I think the sky is the limit with Ethan. He’s in control of that. I think he’s going to be able to throw as far as he wants to.”
He throws farther than anybody else on the planet. And on Sunday that status was worth its weight in gold. Fellow Canadian Rowan Hamilton, a 24-year-old from Chilliwack, B.C., was ninth with a throw of 76.59 metres.