Ex-Cal Hammer Throw Star Camryn Rogers Ready For the Olympic Stage

The 25-year-old Canadian hopes to add a gold medal in Paris to the World Championship she won last summer

Camryn Rogers at Cal's Edwards Stadium /

Camryn Rogers will compete in the hammer throw at Paris beginning a week from Sunday as perhaps the favorite to become the first Cal track and field athlete to win Olympic gold in an individual event since 1948 and the first woman to secure any medal in the sport on the world’s biggest stage.

The 25-year-old, who won three NCAA titles and set collegiate records in the hammer for Cal before graduating in 2022, arrives at the French capital as the reigning world champion and owner of the longest throw this year by anyone in the Olympic field.

Rogers expects a ferocious competition but three years after debuting in Tokyo as an undergrad and underdog, she knows she now belongs.

“I think my confidence level has changed, but in a way the excitement has stayed the same,” said Rogers, who finished fifth at the Tokyo Games. “There’s just that pure ecstatic joy about being there and being amongst such incredible athletes, such incredible women in our event.”

It’s a night and day change of scenario for the native of Canada’s Richmond, BC. She still has a vivid memory of what she felt while walking into the dining hall at the Olympic Village for the first time.

"I was seeing all these record-holders, Olympic champions, world champions in different sports,” said Rogers, 22 at the time. “When I first went in, I definitely was hit with some imposter syndrome. Omigosh, I was surrounded by the best who have ever done it in their sports. I felt so young.”

Rogers competed well, becoming the first Canadian woman to make the finals in the Olympic hammer throw and the youngest to make it to the final at the event. 

“I was just so happy to kind of see that as the beginning of my Olympic career,” she said. “I feel like Tokyo was a really great learning experience. It was my second senior team, my first being at PanAms in 2019. That’s a massive jump. But I also feel like that was the year we really started to figure things out more in the throw.”

Three years later, this is her time.

Rogers now sits at No. 5 on the all-time world list with her year-old mark of 257 feet, 11 inches (78.62 meters). Her 2024 best is 255-4 (77.84), topping what anyone else in the field has achieved.

Camryn Rogers, center, celebrates with fellow World medalists DeAnna Price and Brooke Andersen / USA Today

Even so, earning a spot at the top of the medal podium won’t be easy. Rogers’ chief competition may be DeAnna Price, the 31-year-old American who won the 2019 world title and resides at No. 2 on the all-time list. Price finished third at the 2023 worlds in Budapest, won by Rogers.

Also in the field is three-time defending Olympic champion and four-time world champ Anita Włodarczyk of Poland. The world-recordholder since 2016, Włodarczyk turns 39 years old the day after Tuesday’s hammer throw final, and her best mark this season ranks her just 18th on the world list.

The event’s depth at the top took a hit at the U.S. trials, when 2024 world leader and ’22 world champ Brooke Andersen and Janee’ Kassanavoid — who rank Nos. 3 and 7 on the all-time world chart — failed to qualify for Paris by finishing among the top three.

Qualifying will be held a week from Sunday with the hammer throw final on Tuesday, Aug. 6.

Rogers feels good about the way her climb to elite international status unfolded. It could have gone differently after COVID arrived in 2020 during her junior year at Cal.

She was prepping at the time for the Tokyo Games, which ultimately were postponed a year. She avoided becoming infected and says her family and close friends remained healthy.

“I was very lucky to be able to continue to train for the seven months I was at home,” she said. “It was a good learning year without the pressure of having to compete and get ready for a season. We just got to kind of hunker down and figure some of the things out that I refused to learn.

“The timing was good. For me, it was the beginning of that full, high-level career. We took it in stride and realized it was a huge learning experience and one that has kind of foundationally impacted all of our training and mindset.”

Now, after placing fifth at Tokyo in 2021, second at the World Championships in Eugene in 2022 and first at the Worlds in Budapest last summer, Rogers is set up for success in Paris.

Her schedule this year was a slow build of training mixed with competitions with one goal in mind. “Everything is for the Olympics,” she said. 

Is she feeling the weight of expectations?

“I think pressure always exists, whether you want it to or not. Whether it’s placed on you by yourself or other people. Pressure always exists,” she said. “That’s one of the things I love about competing — the stress and the anxiety, just because I wholly believe in the quote that `Pressure is a privilege.’ 

“So being able to go into the Olympics this year with the experiences that I've had, knowing I’m going up against the best in the world, it’s going to be a battle no matter what.”

Throws coach Mo Saatara, who has three other Cal athletes competing at Paris, has worked with Rogers for seven years.

“In 2021, she was the new kid on the block. Nobody expected much from her. All the elite women at the time, they were more experienced,” Saatara said. “Now there’s sort of a changing of the guard. I think she’s ready with all the experience and it’s a going to be a different experience overall.”

Camryn Rogers /

Saatara predicted it will take a huge throw to win gold, but if Rogers comes up short it won’t because the moment is too big.

“There is nervousness. It’s just that she’s very good at channeling her energy into the competition,” Saatara said. “She’s had a lot of experience dealing with all the logistics (of the Olympics). It’s unique.”

As the current world champion, Rogers will be the focus of her rivals in Paris. “We kind of like that, having the target,” Saatara said. “Because that makes you work harder.”

Rogers has not only worked at her athletic craft but also her command of the French language. Growing up in Canada, she took classes “for a bunch of years,”  but this will be her first visit to Paris.

“I’m excited. I’ve kind of been practicing my French . . . I’m still terrible at speaking it. I’ve tried to work on it a little more so I’m not completely floundering once I’m in the city.”

No one is expecting Rogers to flounder in the Olympic hammer ring.