SHE MIGHT BE as dominant as any active American athlete in any women’s sport. Valarie Allman is the Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone or Simone Biles or Mikaela Shiffrin of the discus.
She is the No. 10 woman — all events — in the most universal sport, according to World Athletics rankings. Now a 3-time discus No. 1 in T&FN’s World Rankings (and headed toward No. 4), in ’21 after she won the first of her now two Olympic titles, Allman polled at No. 9 in our Women’s AOY vote.
Yet Allman reasoned there is a cost to the resolve necessary to become this way.
“People think you have to be all in all the time, and an unbalanced life is how you succeed,” she said. “And that is true. You do need that.”
Yet in doing so, she said, she lost some of the joy of her sport. It was vexing to come away with silver and bronze medals from the past two World Championships.
She reclaimed the joy not because she won another Olympic gold medal, but because she rediscovered the balance. And balance is something she understood from her days as a dancer.
For her, balance means a “great relationship” with her coach and boyfriend, Zeb Sion. Seeing friends. Having a dog. Playing cards and board games.
“Kind of like normal, human stuff,” Allman said.
In Paris she became the third woman to earn a repeat gold medal in the discus. After an opening foul, she seized the lead in the second round and had a winning distance of 228-0 (69.50) in the fourth.
She hit the four longest throws of the competition, Moreover, her 228-3 (69.59) in qualifying was the best at an Olympics since Atlanta96.
When Bin Feng’s last attempt fell far short of the 70-meter line, Allman knew she was golden again and clasped her hands over her face. She unleashed a 227-foot throw on her last attempt, raising her arms in triumph in the ring before running to the stands to hug Sion.
It was nothing like the sterile atmosphere of Tokyo. She said “nothing sets my heart on fire” like knowing her 18-month-old nephew was in Paris to cheer.
After repeating for gold in the pressure-cooker of Paris, Allman, her mother Lisa told T&FN, decamped to Italy for a few days of lessons in Italian cooking before returning to training for the remainder of the Olympic season.
“For most people at this level, the psychology part is most of the battle,” Allman said. “Especially in athletics, so much of what you do is routine and discipline and structure, and you get so much experience doing the same movement, a second-and-a-half, thousands of times throughout the year.
“Being able to walk into your area of play and know your body is going to do exactly what you want it to, that’s the challenge. It’s human nature to draw from your experiences to think how future ones are going to go, and as you’re trying to write a new and better story, it takes so much attention and practice and focus to convince yourself you can be accomplishing your dreams. You can be better than you’ve ever been.”
Allman, 29, is a Stanford graduate from Longmont, Colorado. Paradoxically, she might not be where she is now without the pandemic.
When the world went dark in March ’20, Allman lit up. She and Sion, throws coach for the powerhouse Texas Longhorns, created a training plan that effectively mimicked the Olympic motto: citius, altius, fortius. Faster, higher, stronger.
There were no meets. Never mind technique. Become superwoman. And she started to fly. Or at least the disc did.
Allman was training at a middle school in ’20 but had to locate a bigger field when her throws were nearly clearing the fence and landing in traffic. She moved to a high school, where it became evident, without measurement, her throws were approaching 70m (229-8) — a benchmark.
When a meet did become available — at Rathdrum, Idaho, on August 01, 2020 — Allman traveled 1980M (c3200km) to get there. There were about 30 spectators, plus her puppy, Oly, a mini Australian Shepherd.
On her first attempt, she threw 230-2 (70.15), breaking the American Record of 226-11 (69.17) set by Gia Lewis-Smallwood in ’14. When Allman checked her cellphone, Lewis-Smallwood was among the first to offer congratulations.
It was all a bit surreal because the thrower was not far removed from a crossroads in which she had to decide whether to accept a job at Microsoft or throw the discus — an event in which she calculated perhaps 10 women in the world can make a career.
She conceded she did some “soul-searching” during her final college season. She won a couple of Pac-12 titles but never finished higher than 3rd at the NCAA Championships.
But she was improving under Sion, who subsequently left Stanford for Texas. She wanted to throw in an Olympics.
“I think if the Olympics went off as scheduled, I’m sure she would have done well, but I don’t think she necessarily would have been ready to win,” Sion said.
After Tokyo gold, Allman raised the American record to 233-5 (71.16) in Berlin. She raised it again, to 234-5 (71.46), at La Jolla, California, in April 2022. It was the longest throw in the world in nearly 30 years.
Underscoring her ascension is a World Athletics scoring table comparing relative worth of performances.
For instance, Faith Kipyegon’s WR in the 1500, 3:49.04, merits 1295 points. On those tables, Allman’s 234-5 (71.46) rates 1283. Pretty close. And it’s worth noting that the super-shoes revolution, decidedly a factor in running events, is not a thing in the discus. The physical parameters of the event remain what they’ve always been.
The only other American Olympic gold medalists in the women’s discus were Lillian Copeland in ’32 and Stephanie Brown-Trafton in ”08.
“In the last two years, I think I just felt pressure,” Allman said. “I lost like the excitement to go for it. I feel like it’s just back.
“Whatever the result is, I’m really grateful for how my life has changed to have more balance and consistency outside of track.”