Dame Valerie Kasanita Adams is a retired New Zealand shot putter. She is a four-time World champion, four-time World Indoor champion, two-time Olympic, three-time Commonwealth Games champion and twice IAAF Continental Cup winner. She has a personal best throw of 21.24 metres (69.7 ft) outdoors and 20.98 metres (68.8 ft) indoors. These marks are Oceanian, Commonwealth and New Zealand national records. She also holds the Oceanian junior record (18.93 m) and the Oceanian youth record (17.54 m), as well as the World Championships record, World Indoor Championships record and Commonwealth Games record.
Pamela Kilborn-Ryan, AM, MBE is an Australian former athlete who set world records as a hurdler. For three years, she was ranked as the world's top woman hurdler.
James Randel "Randy" Matson is an American track and field athlete who mostly competed in the shot put. Matson won a silver medal at the 1964 and a gold medal at the 1968 Olympics.
Nadezhda Vladimirovna Chizhova is a retired Russian shot putter who won three Olympic medals and four European titles, and set seven new world records. She became the first woman to break both the 20 m (66 ft) and 21 m (69 ft) barriers. She retired after the 1976 Olympics and later worked as athletics coach in Saint Petersburg.
Margitta Gummel was a German Olympic gold medal-winning shot putter. She competed for the Unified German team in the 1964 Summer Olympics, East Germany in the 1968 Summer Olympics, and East Germany again at the 1972 Summer Olympics. She had a long rivalry with Nadezhda Chizhova of the Soviet Union.
Assunta Legnante is a visually impaired Italian shot putter. She has competed in both the Olympics and the Paralympics, one of the few athletes to do so. As of February 2013, she is the current F11 shot put world record holder. She competed at the 2020 Summer Paralympics, in Women's discus throw F11, and Women's shot put F12, winning silver medals.
The women's shot put at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens was held on 18 August 2004 at the Ancient Olympia Stadium. It was originally planned to hold the discus throw at this venue, but it was discovered that the field was not large enough to accommodate the range of modern discus throwers, and would have posed a danger to spectators. As such, it was decided instead to hold the shot put at the site, despite the fact that the shot put was not contested at the Ancient Olympic Games. There were 38 competitors from 28 nations. After a series of doping-related disqualifications, the event was won by Yumileidi Cumba of Cuba, the nation's first medal in the event. All distances are given in metres.
Dani Stevens is an Australian retired discus thrower who in 2009 became the youngest ever female world champion in the event. She is the current national and Oceanian record holder.
Gong Lijiao is a Chinese Olympic shot putter and the 2020 Olympic champion in that event. A five-time Olympic player and a three-time Olympic medalist, she holds a record eight medals at the World Athletics Championships, including two World titles.
Michelle Denee Carter is an American shot putter. She is the former American record holder in the event with a distance of 20.63 m set at the 2016 Olympic Games. She was inducted into the Texas Track and Field Hall of Fame in 2018.
Stephanie Brown Trafton is an American track and field athlete who won the discus throwing gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. She is thus one of only three American women to have ever won the event.
Ora Anlen was an Israeli Paralympic champion.
Jamaica made its Paralympic Games début at the 1968 Summer Paralympics in Tel Aviv. It competed again in 1972, was absent in 1976, returned in 1980, and has competed at every edition of the Summer Paralympics since then. Jamaica has never taken part in the Winter Paralympics.
Zipora Rubin-Rosenbaum is an Israeli athlete who has won 31 Paralympic medals. She has represented Israel at the Summer Paralympic Games seven times and has competed in athletics, swimming, table tennis, and wheelchair basketball at the Games.
The men's shot put field event at the 1972 Olympic Games took place on September 8 & 9. Twenty-nine athletes from 19 nations competed. The maximum number of athletes per nation had been set at 3 since the 1930 Olympic Congress.
The men's shot put competition at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, Mexico took place on October 13–14. Nineteen athletes from 14 nations competed. The maximum number of athletes per nation had been set at 3 since the 1930 Olympic Congress. The event was wo by Randy Matson of the United States, the nation's sixth consecutive and 14th overall victory in the men's shot put. His teammate George Woods took silver, making 1968 the sixth straight Games the Americans had finished one-two. Matson was the seventh man to win two medals in the event ; Woods would become the eighth in 1972. Eduard Gushchin took bronze, the Soviet Union's first men's shot put medal.
Combined events at the Summer Olympics have been contested in several formats at the multi-sport event. There are two combined track and field events in the current Olympic athletics programme: a men's decathlon and a women's heptathlon.
DeAnna Marie Price, OLY is an American track and field athlete competing primarily in the hammer throw. Price's personal best in the hammer is 80.31 m (263 ft 5 in), the American record, set at the 2021 US Olympic trials. The throw ranked her as the #2 women's thrower in history.
Lynn Graham is an American former track and field athlete who specialized in the shot put. Graham was the Pan American Games gold medalist in 1971. She won six national titles in the shot put and one in the discus. Her lifetime personal record is 16.18 m, set in Garden Grove, California on May 28, 1971.
Josephine de la Viña was a discus thrower from the Philippines who is considered as her country's greatest athlete in the event. She won gold medals in her pet event at the 1966 Asian Games and 1973 Asian Athletics Championships. She also competed at the 1964, 1968 and 1972 Olympics.
