Joe Kovacs received his third consecutive Olympics silver medal within the shot put Saturday in sometimes dramatic type. The Penn State graduate and two-time world champion hit a throw of twenty-two.15 meters on his closing try to assert the silver behind Ryan Crouser, the three-time champion who has bettered Kovacs in three consecutive Olympics.
Nonetheless, the throw continued a wonderful profession for Kovacs, who received his ninth worldwide medal since 2015 and, at 35, solidified his place in shot-put historical past behind its most dominant performer. Crouser turned the primary athlete to win three Olympic shot put titles.
Kovacs was the second former Penn State athlete to win a person medal Saturday on the Paris Olympics. Earlier, pommel horse specialist Stephen Nedoroscik received his second bronze medal of those video games, this time within the males’s particular person competitors.
Kovacs has medaled at practically each main worldwide competitors since 2015, when he received his first gold medal on the World Championships. Kovacs received his second world title in 2019, when he defeated Crouser in what the shot-put neighborhood considers the occasion’s best competitors ever. Kovacs recorded a throw of twenty-two.91 meters on his closing try of the occasion, defeating Crouser and New Zealand’s Tomas Walsh by one centimeter.
In a 2019 interview, Kovacs’ spouse Ashley, who is also his coach, stated she anticipated one thing monumental from her husband’s closing try.
“I knew going into the final spherical that one thing was going to occur with him,” Ashley Kovacs stated in the interview. “It wasn’t going to be a traditional throw. It was both going to be an enormous throw or an enormous miss. The entire time, I felt like I used to be on this bubble watching him from the surface.”
Kovacs practically stop throwing after a troublesome 2018 season during which he did not make the highest 20 on the World Championships. Then he requested Ashley to marry him earlier than asking her to turn out to be his coach. The 2 have been married in November 2019, and Kovacs credited Ashley for reviving his profession.
He has received six medals on the Olympics and World Championships since, and the 2 have twin daughters. They stay in Dublin, Ohio, as Ashley Kovacs previously coached at Ohio State (she spent the previous two years at Vanderbilt).
“After I got here right here [to Ohio], I did not have any intention of getting Ashley coach me,” Kovacs stated in a 2021 interview. “Now, having my spouse as my coach is a large benefit.”
Kovacs arrived at Penn State in 2008 after profitable a Pennsylvania Class 2A state shot-put title, and setting the state report, at Bethlehem Catholic (present Penn State offensive lineman Jven Williams broke Kovacs’ state report in 2022). Although he went to Penn State for monitor & discipline, Kovacs longed to play soccer. In truth, the Penn State teaching employees provided him an opportunity to walk-on as a fullback, the the monitor employees did not like the concept. Kovacs ended up working at Beaver Stadium for one soccer season and received a Large Ten title within the shot put. In 2018, Kovacs’ bachelor occasion was an enormous tailgate on the Penn State-Ohio State sport in State School.
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Penn State on SI is the place for Penn State information, opinion and perspective on the SI.com community. Writer Mark Wogenrich has lined Penn State for greater than 20 years, monitoring three teaching staffs, three Large Ten titles and a catalog of nice tales. Observe him on X (or Twitter) @MarkWogenrich.