Olympic Champion Ryan Crouser Shows Massive Disparity Between His ‘Shot Put Hand’ and Regular Hand

The key to Ryan Crouser’s success is all in the fingertips!

The Olympic gold medalist, 31, showed off the difference between the hand he uses for shot put and the one he doesn’t on the Today show, noting that one was much larger than the other because of his Olympic training,

“Shot put hand,” Crouser said, showing his much larger right hand to the Today hosts on Aug. 5. “And non-shot put hand,” he said, showing his left hand. “So you can see the right hand is quite a bit bigger.”

“My hand only goes to there,” he continued, demonstrating his shot put skills, before asking if any of the hosts wanted to try to “push on” his hand. 

When host Al Roker then attempted it, the Olympian showed that his right hand “doesn’t move” due to the “little muscles in the finger” that he trained to better excel at his sport.

Hoda Kotb chimed in, “So those are muscular fingers.”

“Yeah, so 16 lbs. going almost 40 miles an hour off the fingertips. You get strong fingertips,” Crouser explained.

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Those strong fingertips helped him obtain his third-straight Olympic gold medal on Aug. 3 at the 2024 Paris Olympics. He threw a season-best 22.90 meters in hi -

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s third attempt that earned him the win.

Crouser previously revealed that before he won his first Olympic gold medal, he had considered becoming a football player with the NFL. He shared on NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcast that he had an open tryout with the Indianapolis Colts “lined up” in 2016 before his first Olympics.

“And I said I’m going to do it after the Olympic trials. We’ll see how this goes,” he recalled. “Made the Olympic team. So I said we’ll wait until after Rio. I ended up winning.” 

“And so I said, I’m probably going to stick with this shot put thing for a while,” he added. 

Fellow American Joe Kovacs took silver behind Crouser on Aug. 3, with a best throw of 22.15 meters, while Rajindra Campbell of Jamaica won bronze.

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While Team USA shot putter Payton Otterdahl finished fourth in the shot put with 22.03 meters, he still had something to smile about after revealing on Instagram that he proposed to his girlfriend Maddy Nilles while touring Paris after the shot put competition.

"Meanwhile, in the City of Love... I love you forever, Maddy Nilles! @maddynilles27 ❤️," the athlete captioned the post.

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