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Introduction

The publication of Coaching Youth to Throw the Hammer and the accompanying Hammer Throwers Handbook was made possible through the support of USA Track and Field. Their purpose is to foster hammer throwing for boys and girls in the United States through the education of youth coaches and to provide greater opportunities for boys and girls to participate in this Olympic throwing event.

In 1900 in Paris, the hammer throw was inaugurated as an official event at the second of the modern Olympic Games. The United States dominated the event winning the gold medal in six consecutive games and eight other medal placings. Over the past 16 Olympic Games (1928 through 2000, encompassing 75 years) the United States has won only one gold and one silver medal and had only fifteen male hammer throwers make the finals of the Olympic hammer throw. The hammer throw for women was inaugurated at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney.

From the early 1920s through the mid 30s and 40's more than half of the United States offered hammer throw competitions in their high schools. Today only Rhode Island has continued to offer the hammer throw for high school boys and girls as a regular interscholastic field event. In order for the United States to again become internationally representative in the hammer throw in the Olympic Games and World Championships there must be greater opportunities for American boys and girls to participate in this event in the high school programs and USA Track and Field youth club programs throughout the country.

Let it not be thought that my technique descriptions, coaching suggestions, and created and selected images constitute a definitive treatise on how to prepare youth hammer throwers to ascend the Olympic awards stand.  Borne out of 50 years of experience as the hammer thrower and coach, my suggestions are a personal synthesis through my computer to respond to what I believe is the void in our development system for preparing future American hammer throwers, male and female, to represent United States at the international competition level.

Harold Connolly, March 2005 (Second Edition)