44 Fun Facts About Discus Throw

The discus was part of which ancient Greek multi-event competition, dated to at least 708 BC?

It remains part of the modern decathlon, though it is not in the modern pentathlon.

Which sculptor made the famous fifth-century-BC statue of a discus thrower, the Discobolus?

Myron's original bronze is lost, so his thrower is known only through copies the Romans made centuries later, such as the marble one dug up in Rome in 1781.

Which dictator bought the Palombara Discobolus, a prized Roman copy of the ancient discus thrower, in 1938?

Adolf Hitler paid five million lire after Italy's foreign minister overrode objections to the sale, and the statue did not go back to Rome until 1948.

The Townley Discobolus, excavated at Hadrian's Villa in 1790, is now held where?

The British Museum bought it with the rest of Charles Townley's marbles in 1805; its head had been restored the wrong way, yet Townley insisted his was the better copy.

Christian Georg Kohlrausch, who revived discus throwing as a sport in Germany around 1880, did which job?

Gymnastics teacher: he revived the ancient event with his own pupils at a school in Magdeburg, working out with them by experiment how a discus could be thrown.

František Janda-Suk, who pioneered the spinning discus throw, won Olympic silver in 1900 for which team?

Bohemia: Janda-Suk worked out his spin by studying the pose of an ancient Greek statue of a thrower, and the rotation he introduced is how everyone throws today.

Robert Garrett won the discus at the first modern Olympics in 1896 and which other event?

Shot put: that was the Princeton captain's real event, and he took up the discus only because a professor suggested he try it for the revived Games.

What was wrong with the practice discus that the 1896 Olympic champion had made from ancient descriptions?

Far too heavy: accounts put it at 20 to 30 pounds, so he gave up on the event until he picked up the real thing in Athens, found it far lighter, and entered after all.

At the 1900 Olympics, what stopped the 1896 champion from recording a legal discus mark?

All his throws hit trees: the landing area in Paris was little more than a lane between two rows of them, so a thrower had to be accurate as well as long.

Which epic describes a discus contest at the funeral games for Patroclus?

The Iliad: Achilles stages the games for his dead friend, and the throwers hurl a rough lump of iron that the winner gets to keep as several years' supply of metal.

1928 discus champion Halina Konopacka was which country's first Olympic champion?

Poland's first Olympic champion always threw in a red beret, and in 1939 she helped her husband, a former treasury minister, get the national bank's gold out of the country to France.

In Greek myth, which hero fulfilled a prophecy by accidentally killing his grandfather Acrisius with a discus?

Perseus, in one telling, threw it at games in Larissa, the very place his grandfather had gone to escape the oracle's warning that a grandson would kill him.

After a throw, a discus thrower must leave the circle from which part?

Rear: a thrower must stay inside until the discus lands and then step out of the back of the circle, which is why they fight so hard for balance after letting go.

A discus thrower builds up speed by spinning across the circle about how many times before letting go?

One and a half turns: the spin carries the thrower from the back of the circle to the front, building from slow to fast before the discus is slung off the index finger.

Against most people's instinct, which conditions help a well-thrown discus fly farthest?

A moderate headwind: the discus is shaped to generate lift like a wing, so air flowing over it holds it up for longer, which is why throwers seek out famously breezy venues.

What does the fast spin a thrower puts on a discus at release do for its flight?

Keeps it steady in the air: a spinning discus behaves like a gyroscope and holds its angle, which lets its wing-like shape go on generating lift for most of the flight.

In the 'Greek-style' discus at the 1908 Olympics, athletes threw from where?

A raised pedestal, with no spinning allowed: organisers thought they were copying the ancients, but scholars say the rules came from a mistranslated text, and the event was never held again.

What unusual discus variant was contested at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics?

Two-handed throwing meant three throws with each hand, the best right and left marks added together; Finland's Armas Taipale won it a day after taking the regular title.

The women's discus at the 1952 Helsinki Games produced the first-ever Olympic gold medal for which country?

Soviet Union: Nina Romashkova won it at the country's first Olympics, and four years later a London shoplifting charge over a few hats put her at the centre of a Cold War row.

Al Oerter's run of four straight Olympic discus golds began in 1956 in which Australian city?

Melbourne: he had never won a major international title and was not the favourite, but answered with the longest throw of his career, a habit he repeated at later Games.

Which injury did Al Oerter compete through to win his third gold in Tokyo in 1964?

Torn rib cartilage: he did it in practice less than a week before the Games and doctors told him not to throw, yet he won with an Olympic record while wearing a neck brace.

Which sprinter matched Al Oerter's feat of four straight Olympic golds in one track and field event?

Carl Lewis did it not in a sprint but in the long jump, winning in 1984, 1988, 1992 and 1996 to equal the record exactly 28 years after Oerter set it.

Al Oerter threw his lifetime best at 43 in a comeback for which boycotted Olympics?

Moscow: he finished fourth at the American trials in 1980, a dozen years after his last gold, yet his best throw that season went farther than any of his four Olympic winners.

How did Al Oerter, a painter in retirement, make his 'Impact' series of abstracts?

Throwing a discus into wet paint: the splashes made the picture, and in 2006 he founded Art of the Olympians to exhibit work by fellow athletes.

Who holds the women's discus world record of 76.80 m, set in 1988?

Gabriele Reinsch added more than two metres to the record with that one throw, yet at the Seoul Olympics that September she could finish only seventh.

What keeps Martina Hellmann's 78.14 m of 1988, the longest women's discus throw known, off the record books?

An unofficial meeting: she threw it in a closed session at an East German training camp, then won Olympic gold in Seoul weeks later with a throw almost six metres shorter.

Before it fell in 2024, Jürgen Schult's 1986 discus world record held which distinction?

Oldest men's record in athletics: it had stood for almost 38 years, so long that Mykolas Alekna, who finally beat it, was born 16 years after Schult threw it.

Discus thrower Piotr Małachowski auctioned the silver medal he won at the 2016 Olympics to pay for what?

A boy's cancer treatment: days after the final he put the medal up for sale to help a three-year-old with a rare eye cancer travel abroad for care, and it quickly found a buyer.

Away from the circle, two-time Olympic discus champion Virgilijus Alekna worked in which job?

Prime minister's bodyguard: the towering Lithuanian protected his country's head of government during his years at the top, then became a politician himself, elected to parliament in 2016.

Where did Mykolas Alekna set his 2024 world record of 74.35 m?

Ramona, Oklahoma: the town of barely 500 people is nicknamed Throw Town for its helpful winds, and all six of his throws that day flew beyond 70 metres.

Mykolas Alekna is what relation to Virgilijus Alekna, Olympic discus champion in 2000 and 2004?

Son: at Paris 2024 Mykolas broke the Olympic record his father had held for 20 years, only to see it beaten again, by three centimetres, later in the same final.

Rojé Stona won the 2024 Olympic title with an Olympic record of 70.00 m for which country?

Jamaica: almost all of the country's Olympic medals have come in the sprints, and Stona's win, by just three centimetres, was its first gold in any throwing event.

Sandra Perković won Olympic discus gold in 2012 and 2016 for which country?

Croatia: between her two Olympic titles she was also elected to the Croatian parliament, where she sat for less than a year.

Sixteen years after winning Olympic discus gold, Ilke Wyludda returned to elite competition in 2012 at which Games?

Paralympics: she had lost her right leg to an infection, took up para-athletics, and reached two throwing finals in London.

Months after a burst appendix nearly killed her in 2009, what did Sandra Perković do?

Win the European junior title: she had lost 15 kg and was not expected back in training that year, yet she returned within three months and won with a national record.

Which famous agreement was said to be inscribed on a bronze discus kept in the Temple of Hera at Olympia?

The Olympic truce: its words ran in a circle around the discus, promising safe passage to athletes and spectators on their way to the Games, and a travel writer saw it there centuries later.

In 2022 Valarie Allman won the first discus medal by an American woman at which major competition?

The World Championships: Allman was already Olympic champion, having won in Tokyo a year earlier, but no American woman had stood on a world podium in the event until her bronze.

Which German thrower, Olympic champion in 2012, is famous for ripping his shirt off in celebration?

Robert Harting tore off his shirt, draped himself in a German flag and ran a lap over the hurdles set out on the track; four years later his younger brother Christoph won the same title.

Daniel Ståhl won Olympic discus gold in Tokyo in 2021 for which Nordic country?

Sweden, though he also speaks fluent Finnish: his mother, a former discus thrower herself, moved there from Finland before he was born.

Which Estonian Olympic champion coached Slovenia's Kristjan Čeh when he won the 2022 world title?

Gerd Kanter, the 2008 Olympic champion, had taken charge of Čeh only that February, and five months later the Slovenian was world champion with a championship record.

Why was Ben Plucknett's 72.34 m throw of 1981, farther than the world record, struck from the books?

Doping offences: within a week the sport's governing body banned him after a positive test for anabolic steroids, and wiped both of the world records he had thrown that summer.

Which of these Greek mythological figures was accidentally killed by a discus?

Hyacinth was struck by a discus thrown by his lover, the god Apollo, blown off course in some tellings by a jealous wind god, and the grieving Apollo made a flower that bears his name.

How is 15-year-old Al Oerter said to have discovered his talent for the discus?

He threw back a stray one: a discus landed at his feet, and his casual return throw sailed back past the throwers it had come from; five years later he was Olympic champion.

Which piece of furniture takes its name, by way of Latin, from the Greek word for a discus?

Desk: the Latin discus came to mean a platter and then a table to write on, which makes the thrower's discus a distant cousin of the words dish and disc as well.