The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo might just end up being hammer time in the Tri-Cities.
Two of Canada’s top young female hammer throwers are from the Tri-Cities and they’re on track to make a run for the biggest competition of their athletic careers.
Chanell Botsis, of Coquitlam, and Kaila Butler, who’s from Port Coquitlam, just finished one-two in the women’s hammer throw at the Canada Games in Winnipeg. They’re both 19 years-old, attending college in the United States on athletic scholarships, and they’ll be at the beginning of their peak competitive years when the next Olympics come around.
Botsis, A Charles Best grad who’s studying biomedical engineering and competing at the University of Connecticut, says the technical aspects of the sport means hammer throwers progress more slowly than athletes in other sports that rely on strength, power or agility.
“You’re always learning,” she said. “It’s a process to fix it and make it perfect.”
It was that technical element of learning how to wind the four kg. steel ball attached to the end of a cable around and over her head to a point where it can be hurled for distance that first attracted Butler to the sport. Although there wasn’t much distance in her first six months of throwing after she set aside the discus and shot put she had been hurling at Terry Fox secondary school.
“I fell down a lot,” said Butler, who’s going into her second year at Bowling Green University in Ohio. “It was frustrating, but I didn’t mind falling down.”
And when all the elements of entering the ring, winding the hammer to gain momentum and the strength to hurl it finally came together, Butler said she was hooked.
Botsis’ first throw went all of 18 metres. Six years later, her personal best is 60.08 metres.
Butler, who’s only been throwing the hammer for three years, has attained 58.72 metres.
The two young women first competed against each other at the 2015 district high school track and field championships at Percy Perry Stadium. And while they now only cross paths occasionally because their schools are in different conferences, they still keep tabs on each other’s progress. It’s the nature of the sport.
“The throwing community is pretty tight knit,” said Butler, who trains locally with the Maple Ridge Dynamo throwing club. “You keep in touch.”
“It’s nice when you know people,” said Botsis, who’s affiliated with the Richmond Kajaks track club. “You can cheer for each other.”
Both athletes concede making the step from competing at the high school and club level to US college athletics has presented new challenges like balancing school work with a training regime that eats up a few hours of every day. As soon as Butler returns to Ohio this week and Botsis goes back to school at the end of the month, they’ll be hitting the weight room to prepare for their return to the throwing ring by the end of September.
And the process of learning, honing their technique to be able to achieve the perfect throw, begins anew.
“You can really feel it when your technique is coming together,” said Botsis.
“You can tell from the first wind when you’re going to have a good throw,” said Butler. “Every stage of your development you set a number” for a distance to achieve.
When asked whether there will be room for two female hammer throwers on Canada’s Olympic team when the number 2020 comes around, Butler smiles.
“Oh, there will be room for two of us,” she said.
