Seven weeks ago, Ryan Crouser could barely throw. When your job is hurling a 16-pound metal ball, that spells grave trouble.
“I had a lot more questions than answers,” Crouser, 31, told NBCOlympics.com in an exclusive interview. “And you always hear, ‘Oh, stay the course’ and ‘Trust the process.’ But the process was quite shaken at that point.”
In mid-June, Crouser's confidence was at rock bottom. The U.S. Olympic Trials loomed in a week. The Paris Olympics in a month. Crouser was supposed to fly to Paris and compete for a historic third gold medal and bask in the glory of it all.
The uproar around Crouser was skyrocketing. His journey to Paris was being hyped up as a divine quest to become an Olympic icon. His name appeared in sentences with Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt. He was filming segments with Peyton Manning. Most of the world simply assumed Crouser would win another Olympic title in Paris — it had become routine, after all.
But Crouser could barely throw.
“It was an honest conversation with myself of, ‘Can I get back to being competitive?’” Crouser said. “Your brain is telling your body to do something, but at the same time, the subconscious part of your brain is saying, ‘This is going to hurt.’”
At the World Indoor Championships in March, Crouser suffered a nerve entrapment (loss of mobility) in his right elbow — the throwing elbow, the legacy-maker. Soon after that, he tore a pectoral muscle while bench pressing. His upper body was wrecked.
Doctors promptly operated on the Olympic champion. Crouser underwent two hydrodissection procedures on his elbow, which forced him to take most of the spring off. The doctors didn’t clear him to throw until late May. When he finally did, Crouser's frustration peaked.
In his first practice session post-surgery, the world record holder reared his arm back to throw, as he’d done millions of times before, and pain seared throughout his right side. It felt like a disaster. Crouser’s doctors told him that his arm’s symptoms mirrored what they saw in car accident victims.
“[The practice] was absolutely abysmal,” Crouser remembered.
It was the worst throwing session ever. So I didn't have a lot of confidence going into Trials.
As the public was preparing to ordain him the modern GOAT of throwing, Crouser didn’t know if he could even compete.
“I was mostly thinking, ‘How do I solidify my spot on the team?’” Crouser said. “It wasn’t, ‘How do I win?’ I was just trying to battle my way in.”
Just like the previous summer, when he persevered through two blood clots in his leg to win a world title, Crouser rallied. He made it to Trials in Eugene, lacking confidence, but not ability. Crouser somehow tossed that 16-pound ball 22.84 meters, beating two-time Olympic silver medalist Joe Kovacs and booking his spot on another Olympic team.
“Once I made the team, it was just a sense of relief.”
Crouser was bound for Paris, where he could shoot for Olympic gold. And that third gold medal would make him the first shot putter ever to win three of them.
“That was honestly a better feeling than I've had at any Olympics,” Crouser said. “It made me appreciate how lucky and grateful I am.
“In Rio, I feel like I was too young to appreciate it in full. In Tokyo, I was in great shape, coming off a new world record. That one was mine to lose. So this has been the most appreciative Olympics by far.”
Swelling with appreciation — and a healing upper body — Crouser marched through torrential rain into Stade de France on Saturday night to defend his Olympic title.
In his third attempt of the final, he managed to fight through the lingering pain to hit 22.90 meters. No one — not Kovacs, not former world champion Tom Walsh — topped it. Crouser, for an unmatched third time, was on top at the Olympics.
“Throwing a 16-pound ball as far as you can for a living beats you up," Crouser said hours after the final. "Three golds is a testament to that, to be the first to win three golds."
In the end, the hype that swirled around Crouser all year, as he grimaced through his injuries and doubted himself, came to fruition. In his sport’s history, Crouser stands alone as the all-time great.
Listening to all Crouser endured this year might make you shudder — or make your arm hurt. The thought of pursuing another Olympics? Wild.
But Crouser said he’d like to go for a four-peat at the 2028 Los Angeles Games, just down the coast from his hometown of Boring, Oregon.
“To have the opportunity to hang up my shoes on American soil in a home Olympics would be a dream come true,” he said. “It’s a long ways off … but I would love to go through 2028.