Daniel Stahl

It’s important to note that Daniel Stahl didn’t grow up loving discus throw. He loved Ice hockey immensely. However, as different sports were part of the Swedish educational system, he began exploring numerous sports at the age of 15. During that time, Stahl tried his hand at discus and shot put. At the age of 15, he gave up playing ice hockey and he started competing in track and field, the next year. As a junior, he didn’t take discus throwing too seriously and instead concentrated on having fun. Daniel Stahl spent seven years engaging globally, but in the beginning he couldn’t reach the podium position.

In his first international competition at the 2009 World U-20 Championships in Brixen, Italy, Stahl ranked 16th in both shot put and discus throw. In the following edition in 2010, he opted for shot put over discus throw and ended up in 27th place. At the 2011 European Junior Championships, his shot put performance was underwhelming, and he skipped the discus throw event. 

Following these disappointments, Stahl began training with Vesteinn Hafsteinsson, who had mentored the 2004 Olympic shot put silver medalist Joachim Olsen and the 2008 Olympic discus champion Gerd Kanter. In just three weeks, Stahl’s discus throw improved by six meters to 55.60 meters, earning him gold at the Swedish Athletics Championships. This marked a turning point in his career. In 2013, he decided to focus solely on discus. Competing at the European U23 Championships, he achieved fourth place with a then-personal best throw of 61.29 meters.

In his senior World Championships debut in 2015 in Beijing, Stahl placed fifth with a 64.73m throw. At the 2016 European Championships, he repeated the fifth-place finish but achieved a slightly longer throw of 64.77m. At the Rio 2016 Olympics, Stahl did not advance to the finals. However, a few weeks later, he claimed victory at the Swedish Championships with a personal best of 68.72m. In June 2017, he surpassed the 70m mark for the first time, recording a 71.29m throw, the world’s best since 2013.

Stahl competed at the 2017 World Championships, where his impressive 69.19m throw earned him a silver medal, narrowly losing to Lithuania’s Andrius Gudzius by a mere two centimeters. A decade after his international debut, Stahl’s persistence paid off with a gold medal at the 2019 World Championships in Doha. In the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Stahl secured the discus gold with a 68.90m throw, earning him the title of Olympic champion. 

Daniel Ståhl didn’t land on the 2022 season’s major championships as he finished fourth at the World Championships 2022 in Eugene, Oregon, and fifth at the European Championships in Munich, Germany with throws of 67.10 m and 66.39 m, respectively. He will be kicking off his 2023 season at the Diamond League Doha 2023.

Daniel Ståhl was born on August 27, 1992, in Solna, Stockholm County, Sweden. Since his mother is Finnish, he is of Finnish ancestry. His mother, Taina Sthl, was a discus thrower who won one gold and two silver medals in the Swedish championships.