Joe Kovacs Wins Olympic Silver in the Shot Put

The Penn State graduate has a big day in Tokyo to claim his second Olympic silver medal.

Joe Kovacs, the Penn State graduate who once longed to play football for the Nittany Lions, won his second Olympic silver medal in the shot put Thursday in Tokyo.

Kovacs, a 2011 Penn State graduate and two-time world champ, finished second to Ryan Crouser, who defended his 2016 Olympic title. After setting the world record at the U.S. Olympic Trials in June, Crouser broke the Olympic record three times, winning the event with a distance of 23.30 meters.

The 32-year-old Kovacs, whose best throw was 22.65 meters, added another silver medal to his impressive hardware collection. Kovacs placed second to Crouser at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and defeated Crouser at the 2019 world championships in Qatar. Crouser since has gone undefeated in international competition.

Joe Kovacs and Ryan Crouser (Photo by Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports

Kovacs is a two-time world champion (2015 and '19) and a three-time medalist, having placed second at the 2017 championships. He won a Big Ten championship at Penn State before embarking on his international career.

Kovacs has been living and training in Columbus, Ohio, under the guidance of his wife Ashley, a throwing coach at Ohio State. They were married, and she became his coach, in 2018.

Kovacs spent much of 2020 returning to his training roots. He worked out in his home gym and practiced throwing at a local middle school, recalling the days when he trained with his mother, Joanna Royer, in a high school parking lot in Bethlehem, Pa.

That year followed the greatest event of his career, and what many in track & field consider the greatest shot put competition in history. Kovacs threw a personal-best 22.91 meters to edge Crouser by one centimeter.

Kovacs credited Ashley for helping him work through a career crisis in 2018, when he nearly quit the shot put. Kovacs even began looking for jobs online before Ashley reset his training, technique and approach.

Having my wife as my coach is a huge advantage, because she sees me and knows me more than anybody else," Kovacs said in a 2020 interview.

He also had no qualms about working with his wife. Kovacs had experience being trained by someone with whom he is close. Kovacs' first coach was his mother, who guided him through shot put throwing sessions in the parking lot of Bethlehem Catholic High School.

"I came here [to Columbus] not having any intention of having Ashley coaching me," Kovacs said in the interview, "but it just evolved into that. Maybe because my mom was my coach in high school, it didn't seem so weird or foreign. I already understood how you could have that relationship of having somebody so close to you be your coach."

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