Nylon Net Company

Hammer throw still niche event for Americans

EUGENE — Lance Deal, the last American to win an Olympic medal in the hammer throw, swept the hammer cage he built free of rain the other day at Hayward Field.

Deal, who won silver in 1996, had designed and welded the cage for symmetry and easy viewing. He bought the protective black nylon netting from a business in Bellingham, Wash. The smallest-gauge net the company had made was for a Playboy centerfold, and the largest was for a fishing boat that could swallow two football fields of fish.

He had not thrown in months. And when he did — gracefully spinning four times and lancing the hammer three stories high and nearly a football field long — he yelped from the effort. Then he grew philosophical.

“The secret of the hammer,” he said mysteriously, “is the pendulum.”

In the United States, the hammer may be the least heralded sport in track and field. Throwers are often banished to fields away from the main arena because officials fear lawsuits and worry the weights will pock their carefully manicured fields. In Eugene, the site of the U.S. outdoor track and field championships beginning today, the hammer throw field is closer, adjacent to the track where the fans pack the stands.

Decades ago, in the glory days of track and field, the hammer was more popular in the United States, with more than 20 states fielding high school teams in the discipline. Now only Rhode Island carries it as a high school sport.

The last American to win Olympic gold in the event was in 1956,

In Eastern Europe, which has dominated the hammer since the 1960s, promising throwers are identified in elementary school, sent to training camps and later supported financially. Not so in the United States, where many young hammer throwers learn by reading coaching manuals and eke out a living while squeezing in practices.

Rather than being bitter, U.S. hammer throwers seem introspective. They wax poetic about physics, rhythm and kamiwaza — the Japanese word for divine work or superhuman feat.

“It’s been described as a cosmic, interplanetary experience,” said Kevin McMahon, who threw the hammer for the United States at the 1996 and the 2000 Olympics. “You’re spinning, the earth is spinning and you have this transcendent, Zen-like moment like the planets. It’s ineffable. You want to keep doing it.”

There is another, contested explanation why the United States has not been able to close in on the 86.74-meter world record, set by a former Soviet thrower, Yuriy Sedykh, in 1986. It has to do with what hammer throwers call the system.

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