The Paris 2024 has been filled with many fairytales for Canada, but it has also been filled with so many heartbreaks. Some moments have been tough to swallow, whether it is Andre De Grasse’s failure in the 100m and 200m or the heartbreak of women’s football, and one such moment is now added to that list with Sarah Mitton’s failure in the women’s shot put finals.
The reigning PAN America champion, who was a hot favorite for gold at the Olympics, failed to deliver her best in the finals, as she finished 12th after throwing a disappointing 17.48m to finish as a medalless competitor. In Paris 2024, Mitton came to the competition on the back of a season’s best throw of 20.68m and had a whirlwind performance in qualification with her first attempt of 19.77m only, but the finals turned out to be her worst nightmare.
UWindsor’s Sarah Mitton misses podium in shot put final https://t.co/xnfdkeD57F
— CTV Windsor (@CTVWindsor) August 10, 2024
In an interview with Olympic Canada following her show, Mitton acknowledged her poor performance and spoke of the pressures of performing on a big stage.
“That obviously wasn’t what I came to do,” Mitton said. “I went in with the world at my fingertips and I let it slip through the cracks. … I swung a little too easy in the first round. Mentally I felt very confident and controlled.
“Even with my coach, we said, ‘It’s close, it feels good, it’s just something’s not clicking.’ And then on the third round, kind of was able to regain that feeling and regain that control and just ended up falling out of the circle, sadly. I almost saved it. Almost only counts in horseshoes, not in shot put.
“It hurts because I knew it was very much within my wheelhouse and I wanted to win a medal for Canada and for myself.” said Mitton to CBC
German thrower Yemisi Ogunleye (20.00) won the gold medal, followed by New Zealand’s Maddison-Lee Wesche (19.86) and China’s Song Jiayuan (19.32) for silver and bronze, respectively.
In spite of the fact that reigning two-time world champion Chase Jackson was already out of finals, Sarah Mitton was tipped as the clear favourite to win gold and become Canada’s first-ever Olympic medalist in the shot put, but her dreams were shattered into pieces.
Rain Again Played Role in Paris 2024
In the aftermath of Sarah Mitton’s shocking performance, there have been many questions raised about what went wrong with the Canadian champion. There could be a number of reasons for this, but I believe the rain of Paris on the day of the finals did most of the damage for Mitton. In the first two attempts, the high-flying Mitton was unable to gain grip and exert power, resulting in her throw not flying with disappointing throws of 17.15m and 17.48m as her results.
The rain, however, stopped before the final throw, so Mitton already had to deal with the pressure of sneaking into top 8th relative to her position at 12th. In order to exert maximum force, Mitton conceded foul in the final throw and to crash out of the race. Mitton went easy with her first two throws despite rain, according to experts, which might be due to the failure on grip as a result of poor conditions caused by the rain.
In addition to these ifs and buts, Mitton also faced an emotional barrage as she was coming into Paris 2024, with her father passing away just 10 weeks before Olympics. Clearly, there was an overbagging of expectations for Mitton as she is still a young woman, but it is sure that this will make Mitton more strong going forward and ignite a fire inside her to make up for her mistakes.
