Ryan Crouser Thrilled As His World Shot Put Series Kicks Off Successfully – “The field events can be highlighted, and they can be front and center.”

Ryan Crouser’s World Shot Put Series (WSPS) which features the innovative “King of the Ring” format kicked off successfully last night in Iowa at Drake’s Fieldhouse before a nice energetic crowd.

A nice crowd showed up just for a field event

Throwers were tasked with trying to heave their shot put past a designated line in order to advance in the competition and officials used NFL-style signals to indicate whether they were successful or not. There was even a WWE-style belt for the champion and a live local cable tv broadcast that was also streamed worldwide on the web.

The competition featured a shock result as the double Olympic champion Crouser was only 5th as he only cleared 71 feet. 2025 World Indoor silver medallist Roger Steen was your winner in a tie-breaker over world indoor bronze medallist Tripp Piperi as both cleared 73 feet.

Roger Steen with his championship belt

While Crouer’s throwing didn’t go as well as he would have liked, the meet promoter in him was quite pleased.

“It was fantastic. The crowd has been awesome,” said Crouser after being eliminated but while others were still throwing. “The athlete in me wishes I had thrown a little bit better, but the meet promoter portion and business executive and everything else I’ve been with this event is super happy with it .”

“We had shoot, five guys over 70 ft. Which with this format is crazy … that’s phenomenal….. The guys really overachieved, (and) I think that’s a testament to the atmosphere and the energy that we had. So it has me really excited for the future of WSPS. ”

“I just tried to put a career’s worth of throwing knowledge and frustrations (into this event)… (The) WSPS has kind of been birthed from is just some of the pains that we’ve had as field athletes, so I’m really happy….”

“The field events can be highlighted, and they can be front and center. That we have a loud, enthusiastic crowd out here just for a field event – it’s a testament to that. It doesn’t have to be just track. It can be just field.”

Talk about the event on the Letsrun.com messageboard: Ryan Crouser to unveil new “King of the Ring” shot put format at Drake that mimics that borrows from the NFL and high jump

You can watch the full event broadcast below. We’ve cued it to where Crouser missed his three throws.

Here is Crouser’s post-meet interview: