Ethan Katzberg of Nanaimo continued hammering it. The 2024 Paris Olympics champion destroyed the field over the weekend in Ottawa by winning the Canadian championship with a throw of 81.33 metres to widely outdistance runner-up Jerimiah Nubbe of Kamloops (71.78) by nearly 10 metres.
The meet was the national trials for the 2025 World Athletics championships Sept. 13-21 in Tokyo, where Katzberg will look to defend his title from the last world championships in 2023 at Budapest.
The two closing-ceremony Canadian flag-bearers from the Paris Olympics are having strong follow-up seasons. Katzberg joins Summer McIntosh, who set three world records in a remarkable history-making splash in June at Saanich Commonwealth Place in the Canadian swim trials, enroute to four gold medals and a bronze at the just-completed 2025 world aquatics championships in Singapore.
Katzberg, meanwhile, hasn’t missed much of a beat either since winning the Olympic gold medal last summer and has won five of the six international meets he has competed in this year, including the famed Bislett Games in Oslo, Norway.
The John Barsby Secondary graduate, out of the Nanaimo Track and Field Club, has the 2025 season world second-best throw of 82.73, recorded in May at the Kip Keino Classic in Nairobi, Kenya, but that was bested last month by Rudy Winkler of the U.S. throwing a meet-record 83.16 metres at historic Hayward Field in the Prefontaine Classic in July at Eugene, Oregon, to shunt Katzberg to second place at 81.73.
Katzberg will get his shot at revenge on Winkler, who was sixth in the Paris Olympics, when they meet next month at the World Athletics championships in Tokyo.
Katzberg was voted Canadian Press male athlete of the year for 2024 to become the first Island winner of the award since two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash was selected a trio of times in 2002, 2005 and 2006. McIntosh, meanwhile, was voted the 2024 CP national female athlete of the year.
The circle where Katzberg grew-up throwing the hammer at the Rotary Bowl in Nanaimo has been renamed the Ethan Katzberg Throwing Cage with his Olympic-winning distance of “84.12” inscribed on a plaque that sits adjacent to the cage.
