Nemzeti Atlétikai Központ stadium in Budapest, Hungary has been friendly to two Canadian hammer throwers in Camryn Rogers and Ethan Katzberg.
The two struck gold during the world championships. Katzberg, the youngest Team Canada member in his first global championships and Rogers at just 24 did their country proud.
Rogers threw for 74.35-metres for the win. Her personal best is the national record set just three months prior at Drake Stadium in Los Angeles. Katzberg’s winning toss in Budapest is also a new national record at 81.25. The two hammer throwers, “own the podium.”
Katzberg
“It feels amazing. With it being my first World Championships, I didn’t exactly know what to expect, but I came in with a good mentality and it was an amazing competition,” Katzberg said.
All he had to do join the club was smash the Canadian record for the men’s hammer throw, so he did that in the qualifying round – launching the longest throw in qualifying in the process. Then he stepped into the ring and did it again.
“I knew there was going to be some great competition here. I knew I had to give it my all. My coach Dylan Armstrong told me to go for it, out of the gate. I think that boosted my confidence and I was able to get a personal best, a national record and become World Champion,” Katzberg said.
Rogers
In her first go, Rogers broke the Canadian record.
The Richmond, B.C., native (Greater Vancouver) won on Thursday.
Rogers’s win made it the nation’s first-ever hammer-throw double.
Rogers, is also the second Canadian woman to win a gold medal at Worlds, and the first since Perdita Felicien in 2003, who competed in the 100m hurdles. Rogers improved upon the silver medal that she earned at the 2022 World Championships in Eugene when she became the first Canadian woman to win a medal in a field event.
She told the CBC, “It’s almost hard to wrap my mind around everything that’s happened. I think it’s gonna hit me later on. What an incredible and magical night.”
The men’s world record is 86.74m set by Russian (Soviet Union) Yuriy Sedykh in 1986 in Stuttgart at the European Championships. The women’s world record is 82.98m set by Anita Włodarczyk of Poland in Warsaw at the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial meet in 2016.