Tom Walsh

At the 2009 World Youth Championships in Athletics, Walsh competed in his first international competition and made his shot put and discus throw qualifying debuts, finishing sixth in both events. He claimed the Senior Boys division of the New Zealand National Secondary School Track and Field Championship on December 12, 2009, with a throw of 20.21 meters in the 5 kg shot. This performance set a New Zealand Youth Under 18 record, which Jacko Gill later broke by winning the Junior Boys Under 16 competition.  On March 18, 2010, Walsh set a new junior record for New Zealand with a put of 18.82 meters in the 6 kilograms.

Walsh won the senior national shot put title for the first time in 2012. He added the discus title the following year. In Melbourne, Australia, on December 12, 2013, Walsh broke the New Zealand senior shot put record with a throw of 20.61 meters. On March 22, 2014, in the same city, he surpassed that mark with a throw of 21.16 meters. In his first senior international competition and first-ever indoor competition, Walsh placed third in the men’s shot put at the 2014 IAAF World Indoor Championships. In the qualifying round, he established an indoor national record of 20.41 meters. In the final, he broke this record three times, finishing with a distance of 21.26 meters, which was both an indoor and an outdoor record for Oceania.

Later that year, Walsh improved his outdoor personal best and New Zealand record to 21.23 meters at the 2014 IAAF Diamond League competition in Glasgow on 11 July, before improving again to 21.24 meters during the qualifying round at the 2014 Commonwealth Games on 27 July, which was a Commonwealth Games record. Walsh finished second in the final, earning the silver medal. Walsh successfully defended his New Zealand shot put championship in 2015 on March 8 before breaking the Oceanian mark with a throw of 21.37 meters at the Melbourne Track Classic on March 21.

Walsh won his first Diamond League competition on September 11, 2015, in Brussels with a throw of 21.39 meters. Walsh won the gold medal at the 2016 World Indoor Championships with a throw of 21.78 meters, shattering three indoor records for New Zealand and the Oceania region. He later won the bronze medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro with a leap of 21.36 meters. He claimed the prestigious gold medal at the IAAF World Championships in 2017 with a leap of 22.03 meters. At the Sir Graeme Douglas International Track Challenge in West Auckland on March 25, the same year, he surpassed this mark with a distance of 22.67m, placing him in the top 10 of all time.

Walsh came in third again to win the bronze at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics with a throw of 22.47 meters. Walsh tied his personal indoor Oceanian record to take home the bronze medal at the 2022 World Athletics Indoor Championships. He was chosen to be the flag-bearer of his country at the Commonwealth Games 2022, alongside squash star Joelle King. He also went on to become the Commonwealth Games champion for the second-time as he defended his title successfully.

His greatest rivals are the United States’ Ryan Crouser and Joe Kovacs. Crouser is the present holder of the Olympic record and is a two-time gold medal winner at the Olympics and also holds both the indoor and outdoor shot put world records. While Kovacs won gold medals at the World Championships in 2015 and 2019 and is a two-time Olympic silver medalist.

Walsh was born on March 1, 1992, to parents Peter and Karen Walsh in the New Zealand town of Timaru. Walsh, along with his older brother Bill Walsh, grew up in Timaru’s far north. Peter Walsh, Tomas’s father, competed in both field and track sports. He won the junior men’s shot put competition in New Zealand in the middle of the 1960s. His mother Karen always wanted him to be a the member of the New Zealand’s national rugby team, All Black.