Valarie Allman is headed to the Paris Games next month. And the timing, she thinks, couldn’t be much better.
The 2013 Silver Creek grad will have the chance to defend the women’s discus gold medal she won at the Tokyo Games three years ago after winning the event at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in Eugene, Oregon on Thursday.
The 29-year-old threw a meet-record and season-best mark of 232 feet and 7 inches in the opening round Monday, then went above 220 on five of her final six tosses, including a closing throw of 232.
Pumping her arms in victory, she embraced her coach and boyfriend, Zeb Sion. Her shiny-white smile hadn’t dimmed when talking with reporters afterward.
At the Tokyo Games “it was so fun to be the underdog and climbing. That was such a fun feeling,” Allman said. “I think the last two years, I just felt pressure and lost that excitement to go for it. And I feel like that’s back.”
The U.S. team trials was the meet Allman believed she gained the needed momentum to win gold in 2021. A springboard is what she hopes it can be again.
Allman is heading to Paris on the back of a dominant showing at Hayward Field, where her shortest throw during the week — 220-5 — was still 15 feet further than anybody in the field. There, she can become the fourth woman and first American since women’s discus was added to the Olympics in 1928 to win two golds at the Games.
“I think in 2021, the Olympic trials was like such a special meet for me, and I really felt like I found my momentum,” she said. “And I was hoping to have a similar type of experience at this one that coming into this next month, I would really feel like training and my competitions, my technique was all coming together. I don’t think I could feel more excited for this next month just based on how this meet went.”
Allman was an All-American and two-time discus state champ at Silver Creek who still owns the state’s longest throw by a high school girl at 183-3, as well the state meet record of 167-3.
At Stanford, she was a six-time All-American and two-time Pac-12 champ.
Her second Olympic Games will come two years after she broke the North American discus record with a throw of 234-5.25, the longest by a woman in 30 years.
“The biggest part that was so hard in Tokyo was just obviously my family not being able to be there,” she said. This time, “the Allman crew is going to be there in strong force, and nothing sets my heart on fire knowing that my 18-month-old nephew is going to be cheering there. I can’t wait for that whole experience.”
In Paris, Allman will again be joined by fellow-St. Vrain Valley School District graduate and former Stanford teammate Elise Cranny, who qualified for her second Olympics by taking second in the trials’ 5,000-meter run on Monday.
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