Personal Bests - Joe Kovacs

Published by IAAF on November 30, 2015

Joe Kovacs earned the biggest prize of his career when winning the world shot put title in Beijing earlier this year. We chat to the US thrower about some of the best and greatest things in his life. 

My best achievement in athletics

It is definitely reaching this point in my career and becoming a world champion. To win the world title and compete at the IAAF World Championships was in many ways the fun part, while my greatest achievement was simply making the team. When I was in Beijing, I was relaxed and could simply get after it. The final in Beijing turned into a battle and I was ready for some big throws. I learned a lot from this experience, but it was also very satisfying to win this for my coach, Art Venegas. 

My greatest rival

I have many rivals in the US with any number of us in any given year going for the same goal. I used to train with Ryan Whiting (two-time world indoor champion), who is one of the best shot putters in the world and one of my main rivals. We are both from Pennsylvania, we used to train together at Penn State and we used to share the same coach. He did not make the US team for the 2015 World Championship which is a loss, but the pair of us help motivate each other to throw further.