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Connie Ryan and James F. Cour of UPI, in
the United States, and Bob Phillips, in London, trace the careers of
shot-putt giants Randy Matson and Neal Steinhauer
IN MIGHTY MATSON'S SHADOW
 "People
are getting bigger and stronger. The limits seem to be constantly
expanding in both running and field events. I won't try to say what
I eventually may do." That is how James Randel Matson, 6ft 6 1/2in
(1.995m) tall and a sprightly 18st 8lb (118kg), sees the future of
shot-putting. Neal Claud Steinhauer, even more monolithic at 6-6 ¾
(2.00m) and 19-4 (122.5kg), is also more explicit: "I don't see why
75ft can't be done in the next couple of years. My improvement,
distance-wise, depends on my being able to improve my form. I have
the strength now. Randy will be regularly going 72ft. this year."
Matson, from Texas Agricultural and Mining University, and
Steinhauer, from the University of Oregon, are currently far ahead
of the rest of the world in the shot ranking. Steinhauer, for
example, is consistently throwing four to five feet further than men
like Dave Maggard, Dave Davis, George Woods and Roger Orrell- the
third line in the USA's great phalanx of talent in the event which
they have dominated with only rare foreign opposition for 60 years.
But so far as Steinhauer is concerned, the figures which interest
him more are those reflecting Matson's measure of superiority as the
undisputed world leader in the event. In 1965, Matson ranked number
one with his world record 70-7 ¼ and Steinhauer led the rest at 63-5
(19.34m). Last year, despite lacking peak fitness and strength,
Matson was still at the top with 69-2, but Steinhauer had decisively
closed the gap with 67-0 1/4. Now in 1967, Matson is back in
record-breaking mood and Steinhauer, despite showing further
improvement, is as far behind as ever.
Only once in their rare confrontations so far has the Matson armour
shown a vulnerable chink. In San Francisco, in January this year,
Matson suffered his first shot-putt defeat since the 1964 Olympic
Games in Tokyo as Steinhauer reached 66-6 ¾ for a world best-ever
indoor mark and had three other throws better than Matson's best for
the evening of 64-4 ½. But even this long-sought-after victory had a
bitter taste about it. "They said Matson wasn't in shape and I was,"
Steinhauer recalled later, "and that my win was a fluke. I guess
I'll just have to do it again to prove it."
Later the same month, Steinhauer improved the indoor record to
67-10, but the following week, in a highly publicised duel in San
Diego, Matson beat him by eight inches with a last-round effort. Six
days later, in front of 7,000 fellow-Texans at Fort Worth, including
his parents, his sisters and his wife. Matson beat Steinhauer's
record mark four times with a best of 69-2. The following night, in
Dallas, Matson reached 70-7 1/2, and even the knowledge that it was
achieved on a downhill throwing-area could hardly have made it any
easier to bear for Steinhauer.
Not since the days of Parry O'Brien, the great innovator who
revolutionised the technique of the event and was the first man to
beat 60ft (18.29m), and Bill Nieder, who superceded him as world
record-holder and Olympic champion, has there been such an exciting
prospect of rivalry in the event. Bridging the gap between O'Brien
and Nieder on the one hand and Matson and Steinhauer on the other
was Dallas Long, who served his apprenticeship under the first two,
set his first world record at 18 in 1959, took Nieder's world record
from 65-10 (20.06m) up to 67-10 (20.67m), and won the 1964 Olympic
title before retiring to make way for Matson.
"That's getting a little old," the usually affable Steinhauer
mutters when asked if he is going to catch up with Matson, but there
is little of the ill-feeling between them which characterised the
relationship in and out of the circle of O'Brien and Nieder, whom
O'Brien once graphically but inaccurately described as a
"cow-pasture performer." "The conversation between us usually never
gets past 'How's the weather?' or 'How are you?'", Steinhauer says.
“But Matson was the first to congratulate me after I got the indoor
record in San Francisco. There were a couple of reporters after the
meet who tried to get each of us to say something bad about the
other. It appeared to me like they wanted to get a feud going."
Even in a country and an age in which precocity abounds, Matson's
early career details still make breathtaking reading. Born on March
5, 1945, in Kilgore, Texas, he reached 53-5 in his first-ever effort
with the 16lb shot in 1963 at the age of 17, and within four months
had improved to 60-6. Yet even this performance was still not the
best ever by an American schoolboy, for Dallas Long had achieved
61-0 ½ (18.60m) in 1958.
In 1964 Matson made 10 progressive improvements on his personal
best, convincingly beating Long to win the AAU title, and culminated
his season with his best-ever performance for the silver medal in
Tokyo. Within a month of the start of the 1965 outdoor season,
"Track and Field News," that ubiquitous American specialist magazine
which has recorded with loving care the achievements of Matson and
his fellow-American athletes over the years, was reduced to asking
plaintively in a front-page headline, "What now, Randy?"
The reason for their rhetoric was three improvements on Long's world
record, climaxed by his 70-7 ¼ effort on the Texas A & M campus at
College Station. "Track and Field News" prosaically pointed out that
Matson's mark was 4.06 per cent better than the previous world
record and 10.3 per cent better than the next best mark in the world
for the year. "Everything just happened to go right." the champ
commented with masterful restraint.
 It
took almost two years, and needed the motivation of a "Randy Matson
Day" proclaimed in honour of his final home appearance as a Texas A
& M student, for Matson to finally improve his mark to 71-5 ½ in
April this year. Understandably, he had long since given up talking
in terms of targets or limits, but it required the unknowing help of
the groundsman to lift Matson out of the vacuum he has inevitably
occupied. A maroon line had been painted on the ground away from the
shot circle and Matson and his wildly enthusiastic fellow-students
and supporters assumed it indicated his existing record. Instead, it
marked 71 ft and Matson duly sent the shot arching out beyond on his
first effort. Subconsciously admitting to a problem of lack of
opposition which only Steinhauer can solve, Matson confessed after
the event, "I felt more pressure for this meet than for any since
the 1964 Olympics."
Last year's recession was caused by overindulgence in basketball
during the preceding winter as a member of the university team. Both
he and his coach believed that the break from athletics would do him
no harm, but his shot-putting suffered through lack of preparation
and basic conditioning, and with the lure of gold in Mexico he gave
up his aspirations on the court and concentrated on his
weight-training and polishing of his technique this past winter.
Now his technique has been developed to its ultimate and only more
and increased work with the weights can give him the added strength
to improve on his record still further. The claims of domestic and
international competition prevented him from obtaining the necessary
qualifications during his three years at university to graduate this
month with a degree in marketing and he will return to Texas A & M
this September to complete his academic work. He will no longer be
eligible for inter-collegiate competition but has been offered full
facilities to continue to train for the Olympics.
Even two years ago, Matson was already expressing a preference for
the discus and at that time- with a minimum of specialised training
for the event- he had already thrown 201-5 1/2, the fourth best
performance in the world for the 1965 season. Now he has pushed his
discus best out to 213-9, a USA record and just 2 ½ inches short of
Ludvik Danek's official world record. Danek, Babka, Oerter and the
rest notwithstanding, the relatively inexperienced Matson presents a
very serious threat to become the first man since Clarence Houser in
1924 to win both the shot and discus Olympic titles.
In the shadow of such formidable facts and figures, Steinhauer-
himself no mean discus-thrower, either- has every cause to doubt the
validity of his challenge to Matson's supremacy, but he still has
plenty to offer and is far from overawed. "Matson has shown me that
70ft is possible, and that's good," he says confidently. "This
competition thing can work both ways. We can help each other. You
need competition to keep you going."
Described as "the hardest worker I've ever seen" by his renowned
university coach, Bill Bowerman, Steinhauer's meteoric progress
compares favourably with Matson's. Born in Eugene, Oregon, the home
town of University of Oregon, on August 18, 1944, his first efforts
with the 161b shot as an 18-year-old schoolboy in 1963 produced a
season's best of 52-6 (16.00m), and in 1964 as a freshman at Oregon
he improved to 57-8 ¾ (17.59m) despite missing most of the season
because of scholastic ineligibility to compete for the university.
His first indoor competition in 1965 produced a startling
improvement to 61-5 (18.72); he won the National Collegiate outdoor
title (in Matson's absence), and finished the year with a best of
63-5 ½, as previously mentioned second only to Matson in the world
for the year.
He added the best part of four feet in 1966, and his early-season
effort of 68-11 ¼ (21.01) in March this year put him at the top of
the USA outdoor rankings- for all of three weeks until Matson got
into his stride. Steinhauer trains three to five hours a day, six
days a week throughout the year, has lifted 4801b in the squat and
360lb bench-press, and has run 100yd in 10.6sec.
At Eugene he trains during the winter in an indoor gymnasium with a
wall only 55ft away, bouncing the shot off the wall and regularly
breaking light-bulbs in the process.
So far as technique is concerned, there may be more room for
improvement for him than for Matson. "He's had a bad position in the
ring," coach Bowerman comments. "He's been hurrying too much and
putting the ball into its arc with insufficient leverage for an
optimum throw. Recently, though, he's been developing better form
and everything's there if we can get him into position."
Now, however, Steinhauer has graduated from university with a degree
in graphic arts and plans to enter the armed forces, so Bowerman's
plans may never come to fruition. Steinhauer will be hoping
otherwise- and so, too, for different reasons and with mixed
feelings, will Matson.
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