Tom Walsh led the Commonwealth Games shot put final in Glasgow for four rounds, and then lost it by four centimetres.
The Timaru thrower opened with 21.03 metres on his first attempt at Scotstoun Stadium, a distance that held up through the middle of the competition and looked for a long time like it would carry him to a third straight Commonwealth title. Nigeria’s Chukwuebuka Enekwechi found 21.07m in the fifth round. Walsh could not answer it. England’s Scott Lincoln took bronze with 20.99m, which left the medallists separated by eight centimetres in total.
It was, by the standards of a man who has thrown 22.90m, a modest evening. Walsh fouled in the third and fourth rounds, giving up the momentum that his opening throw had built. His fifth attempt drifted outside the sector and hit a television microphone. His last throw was not enough to take back the lead.
He was blunt about it afterwards. “I’m not here to get second,” he told RNZ. “Between me and my team, we want to achieve some things in the next two years and today wasn’t up to that standard.”
The diagnosis was not physical. “Physically, I’m in great shape,” he said. “Just mentally I didn’t quite put it together today. I let the occasion get the better of me, which is very disappointing, but it also gives us some room to improve.”
That is a rare admission from an athlete who has spent a decade being the calmest man in the circle. Walsh has built a career on delivering when the pressure is highest. He won world outdoor gold in London in 2017 and Olympic bronze in both Rio and Tokyo, becoming the first New Zealand man to win an Olympic medal in a field event. Indoors he has been close to unbeatable, with titles in 2016, 2018, 2025 and again in March this year at Toruń in Poland, where a final throw of 21.82m gave him a fourth world indoor crown and more world indoor medals than any man in the history of the event. He is 34 and still winning global titles, which is not how throwing careers usually go.
The setting made the result sting a little more, and also gave it a certain symmetry. Walsh’s first Commonwealth Games medal was a silver at Glasgow in 2014, when he threw 21.19m as a 22-year-old who had only recently stopped working as a builder. Gold followed at the Gold Coast in 2018 and at Birmingham in 2022, the second of those with 22.26m, one of the best throws ever produced at the Games. Twelve years after his first Glasgow medal, in the same city, he has ended up with the same colour and with 16 centimetres less on the tape.
For Enekwechi, the night was historic in the other direction. The win gave Nigeria its first ever Commonwealth gold in the men’s shot put, and was reported at home as the country’s eighth gold of the Glasgow programme. Enekwechi has been a fixture on the world circuit for years without a major title, and he got this one with a single throw in the fifth round after trailing the whole way.
Walsh’s next target is not another Commonwealth Games. “LA is my goal at the moment, and we’ll see what comes after that,” he said. “If I’m still loving it and still enjoying it, I’ll keep going if I can make it work.” The Los Angeles Olympics are in 2028, which would make them his fourth, and asked whether he might turn up for a fifth Commonwealth Games after that he offered the most quotable line of the night. “I mightn’t have a marriage if I do a fifth.”
He also put the loss in a longer frame. “One thing with age is I understand how rare these things can be, so having the weight of a medal around my neck is a pretty cool feeling.”
That is worth taking seriously rather than reading as consolation. Very few New Zealand athletes have been in medal contention at four consecutive Commonwealth Games in any sport, let alone in a throwing event where the physical demands are unforgiving and careers tend to be short. Walsh has now medalled at every Commonwealth Games he has entered, across twelve years, and has done it while also winning at world level indoors and outdoors and at two Olympics.
The shot put was not the only New Zealand result at Scotstoun that night. Anna Grimaldi, a three-time Paralympic champion, took bronze in the women’s 100m T47 in 12.46 seconds on her first appearance at a Commonwealth Games. Canada’s Sheriauna Haase won in a personal best 12.23, with teammate Chloe Dunbar second in 12.33, as reported by CBC Sports. Grimaldi is a long jumper by trade and had made the sprint her secondary event, so a first Commonwealth medal in it was a genuine bonus.
New Zealand’s athletics team has already had a very good Glasgow. Zoe Hobbs won the women’s 100m, the country’s first Commonwealth sprint title, and Lauren Bruce took silver in the hammer throw. Add Walsh’s silver and Grimaldi’s bronze and the track and field programme has delivered at a rate the team has not managed for some years.
The Games run until 8 August. Walsh will be back in a circle somewhere in Europe within weeks, because that is what he does, and the next world outdoor championships are the obvious place to make the point he wanted to make in Glasgow. Four centimetres is not a gap that requires a rebuild. It requires one throw.
Did Walsh get the result he deserved, or does a fourth Commonwealth medal in twelve years speak for itself? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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