John Powell spinning back into masters

By Ken Stone

Four-time Olympian and former world record holder John Powell – a name synonymous with the discus – is talking about unretiring again and resuming his masters career after a 15-year lull.

But Powell, who won the silver medal at the 1987 World Championships at age 40 and the M40 gold at the Melbourne WAVA meet the same year, has other events in mind.

On December 3, 2001, Powell e-mailed me: “No disco. Maybe weight (throw) and hammer. I live through the throwing of (Brisbane WAVA M50 discus) world champion Tom Fahey! He came to camp last year. He used it to tune up and review.”

Powell, a former San Jose policeman and college coach, now lives in Las Vegas and helps operate a throws camp at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.

The camp's Web site is http://www.johnpowellassociates.com/

Still the single-age recordholder for the discus at age 36 (233-9), Powell isn’t tempted to challenge the current M50 age-group WR of 68.40 (224-5) with a-1.5 kilogram disc.

“No chance,” Powell says of the mark set in 1997 by Germany’s Klaus Weiffenbach. “Does Al Oerter know about this record?”

Of the M55 discus WR of 200-10 by Germany’s Klaus Liedtke, also in 1997, Powell says: “Slim chance. It’s hard to throw 200 with any weight discus.”

Powell, who turns 55 in June 2002, says his weight is the same as his world-class days (about 230 pounds on a compact 6-foot-2 frame), “but it has shifted some. Training consists of jogging on a treadmill and pullups.”

If Powell throws himself seriously into the weight throw and hammer, it won’t be anything new. He has a 1984 hammer PR of 191-11 and has spun the 35-pound weight 66-4 ½.

In 1987, Powell told Jon Hendershott of Track & Field News: “Throwing the weight well is, for me, indicative of total body fitness. . . . The correlation is the farther I throw (the weight), the farther I throw the discus.”

Powell has been around the ring for more than 30 years now – having made his first national team in 1970. He took fourth at the 1972 Munich Olympics, bronze at 1976 Montreal (after being picked to win by most experts) and made the doomed U.S. team to Moscow in 1980 before again taking bronze at Los Angeles in 1984. The 1987 meets appear to have been his swan songs on the international level – and he was banned from competition after taking part in a renegade tour to South Africa.

Nicknamed “Roadrunner” in his elite days for his speedy motion across the ring, Powell also markets his own training video at http://www.johnpowellassociates.com/video.html

In May 1975, Powell broke South African John Van Reenen’s 2-month-old WR in the discus by two feet with a third-throw effort in Long Beach, California, of 226-8. (The discus flew so far that it crashed down onto a service road, skipped over some grass and rolled to where Dwight Stones was “messing around after losing the high jump,” recounted Track & Field News.)

Powell’s world record lasted almost a year, beaten by archrival Mac Wilkins (now 51 but not  competing as far as I know).

In the 1987 interview, just weeks before his best performance on the world track stage (and a sloping-ground PR of 72.08 or 236-6), Powell shared his athletic philosophy:

“Something . . . I’ve learned over the years is that each person, and athlete, creates his or her own vision of success. It would have been very easy for me to say, ‘I finished second, so I failed.’ When I was younger, I certainly might have felt that way.

“But each of us crates his own sense of what is important. I threw my longest throw of the year and finished with a good performance – for me. And that’s what is most important.”

Welcome home, John.