DISCUS THROWERS ARE like fine wine. It takes time for them to properly ferment. The reason for this, according to ’08 Olympic champion Gerd Kanter, is the high degree of difficulty involved in executing a movement that is both linear and rotational, and which must be performed rhythmically. “If you get tight,” he says, “it really affects your performance. It usually takes a lot of experience to learn to stay relaxed in a high-pressure situation, which is why discus is an old boy’s event.”
Or used to be, anyway, before Mykolas Alekna began tearing up the record books.
If you are in the mood for some astonishment, check out his WA profile. There you will read how he became Collegiate Recordholder, World Championships silver medalist, European Championships gold medalist and record-holder… all at the age of 19.
A year later, he was European U23 champion and recordholder and took his second WC medal.
Before his twenty-second birthday, he had relieved Jürgen Schult of the World Record the German had held since ’86, won a second European Championships medal, and surpassed his father’s old Olympic Record on the way to finishing 2nd to Rojé Stona in Paris.
So far this season, Alekna has already twice extended his World Record and become the first man to launch a discus 75m.
And he has done all this while working towards a psychology degree at Cal, a school that does not offer “blow-off” classes designed to keep athletes eligible.
It’s fitting that Berkeley is located not far from the Napa Valley where the combination of soil and climate — the “terroir” as the French would say — produces some of the world’s best wine. Discus throwers need the proper terroir as well, and Alekna found just the right stuff at Cal.
Golden Bear throws coach Mo Saatara maintains a collaborative environment with his athletes, which has suited Mykolas’ personality. Alekna, according to Saatara, “asks a lot of questions. He’s hungry for knowledge about the biomechanics of throwing, how training is supposed to work, what to be mindful about.”
Their give and take has allowed Alekna to develop a style of throwing that feels comfortable and can hold up under the pressure of an Olympics or World Championships.
“People don’t realize how much of his technique is his technique,” Saatara explained. “Mykolas is the driver there. He understands what he is trying to do and why.”
Mo has also collaborated effectively with Alekna’s Lithuanian coach, Mantas Jusis, who started working with Mykolas and his 2-years-older brother Martynas a few years ago when their dad — 2-time Olympic champ and Lithuanian sporting legend Virgilijus — brought them to his training center.
When asked if he felt any pressure serving as steward of the Alekna legacy, Jusis did not mince words. “How would you feel,” he replied, “if Michael Jordan came to you and said, ‘teach my boys to play basketball’”?
Saatara says he has enjoyed the experience of working with Jusis, whom he calls “one of the best coaches in the world” and says their partnership in training Mykolas has been “seamless.”
One thing that has kept them in harmony is Saatara’s willingness to play the long game, which is not always easy for a collegiate coach whose job depends on scoring points at conference and NCAA meets.
But Saatara says that with an athlete as explosive as Mykolas, a coach has to be careful not to get “too crazy” during training. “You can’t go to the well too much,” he explained. “It’s better to be more conservative with volume and load so the athlete can keep training and getting better instead of missing time with an injury. Discus throwing is a highly skilled task, and the more time you can spend on it the better you’ll be.”
To keep Alekna and his other athletes feeling fresh, Saatara gives them Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays off from training.
That philosophy has helped Alekna maintain a balance between academics and athletics, and to have enough energy when the NCAA season ends to head off to Europe and represent Lithuania during a full schedule of summer competitions.
In addition to skilled coaching, another important aspect of discus thrower’s development is their overall sense of well being. Vésteinn Hafsteinsson, who coached Kanter and Daniel Ståhl to World and Olympic gold and is viewed by many as the Nordic Yoda of the sport, calls this the “social” aspect of an athlete’s training.
“If an athlete is out of balance socially,” he says. “If they are feeling depressed or lonely or are struggling with their relationships, they will not perform to their best. It is easy to forget that athletes are human, but like everyone else they function best when they are feeling some happiness.”
This could have been a problem for Alekna, who arrived at Cal in the fall of ’21 knowing not a single person on campus. Luckily, his new teammates were there to welcome him, among them Charlie Dang, who recalls Mykolas as being “extremely shy” at first and not at all comfortable with the type of slang-filled English spoken by a typical American college kid. They quickly bonded though, over video games and food. Between bouts of trying to destroy each other at UFC and FIFA, they searched out local establishments for the best and cheapest hamburgers. Ike’s Beast Mode sandwich ($15 for a 1530-calorie monster) quickly became their favorite.
Charlie and Mykolas trained in the same group and both majored in psychology, which helped cement their friendship. And as Mykolas’ career has taken off the past four years, Charlie has taken on an important role.
“It wasn’t an easy four years. But I decided to stay in college and not go pro because getting a degree was really important to me.” — Mykolas Alekna
“People always praise Myka,” he explained. “Which is understandable. He came out here his first semester on campus and his standing throws were already farther than the older guys’ best full throws. And now he’s won all those medals and has the World Record. But I try to keep him in balance. After he came back from Oklahoma last week, I congratulated him but told him, ‘Hey, you’re No. 1 now, but there’s other guys over 70m, so stay hungry!’”
Another teammate who has helped Alekna find his way at Cal is World and Olympic hammer champion Camryn Rogers. Ed Wright, a 4-time All-America high jumper for Cal who now serves as the Academic Advising Coordinator for the team, says that “being around Camryn, who has two degrees and will eventually go to law school here, made it easier for Mykolas to see himself as more than just a discus thrower, to realize that there is more to life than just his accomplishments in the ring.”
Alekna reiterated this after his 75-meter bomb in Ramona. “It wasn’t an easy four years,” he said. “But I decided to stay in college and not go pro because getting a degree was really important to me.”
He’ll have that degree in May, and will finish his career for Cal at the NCAA meet in June. Oddly, the collegiate title, so far, has eluded him; he came up short in Eugene in ’22 and in Austin in ’23. Last year he redshirted. Thus a crucial Eugene revisit beckons.
After that, the question is… what’s next? Upon leaving the comfortable terroir of Berkeley, can he settle into a new environment that will allow him to fulfill a potential that even Hafsteinsson, a traditional Icelandic stoic not given to superlatives, calls “limitless”?
Unfortunately for his competitors, it seems likely he will.
Though it’s not easy to get athletes and coaches to talk about the future when there is other business — competing for an NCAA and World Championships title — at hand, it seems that Alekna’s future will not be too dissimilar to his past, except that he will no longer have several hours of homework every night.
Alekna enjoys training with Jusis and Martynas back home in Lithuania, which will likely become his new base of operations. Jusis says that the two brothers enjoy a “supportive” relationship that is also “healthily competitive.”
He describes the dynamic between them as “special” and says that it brings a lot of energy and motivation to both. “When Mykolas is around, Martynas clearly has more energy and drive to train. Mykolas even used to take care of Martynas’ daily routine — making sure he got up on time for training and had breakfast. But after Martynas nearly outthrew Mykolas in a session, Mykolas gave up those responsibilities and said, ‘You’ve grown up now. Take care of yourself!’”
Mo and Mantas will continue to collaborate, and Alekna will also likely return to Berkeley for regular training camps, especially during the cold Lithuanian winters. There, he will be able to partake in the team culture he has grown to treasure, to devour some sandwiches, and to receive an occasional dose of “balance” from Charlie Dang and his other friends as they talk trash and battle on the virtual soccer pitch. Alekna might also enjoy the relative anonymity he feels in the U.S. According to Dang, who visited his friend in Lithuania last summer, Mykolas cannot walk down the street there without “old men coming out of the bars holding up their phones and saying, ‘Picture! Picture!’”
Dang also says that the members of Alekna’s Berkeley crew have already talked about getting back together at the Olympics in Los Angeles to support their guy. If they can get their hands on some Beast Mode sandwiches there, it might be game over in the men’s disc.
