SKY’S THE LIMIT

When two discus throwers from Northern Iowa huddled outside the cage at a recent Wisconsin meet, their thoughts were nowhere near the competition.

They were too busy looking up at Anders Holmstrom.

“How big is this guy?” one asked in a whisper. He received only a bewildered shrug.

How big? Though there’s no way to say for sure, Holmstrom might be the biggest track-and-field athlete in the world.

At 7 feet and 330 pounds, the Wisconsin shot-putter is the biggest person competing in NCAA men’s track. After a stunning year of personal progress, he is now closing in on the chance to compete for Sweden as the biggest track-and-field athlete in the Sydney Olympics.

Holmstrom’s physical gifts--he has the agility of athletes a foot shorter and might not even be finished growing--combined with his stature give him advantages in his sport, which is just simple physics applied to putting a 16-pound ball as far as possible.

“It helps to be bigger, but hard work is the most important part,” Holmstrom said. “You have to want to improve more than anything. That’s what I want.”

With such a work ethic, experts think Holmstrom could one day revolutionize the shot put.

“Most people who see him and work with him think he’s the next big one, the next big thrower,” said Mark Napier, Wisconsin’s assistant coach in charge of field athletes.

“His last coach said he could do for throwing what Michael Jordan has done for basketball. It took less than a week of practice for me to realize exactly what he was saying.”

The 21-year-old Holmstrom is improving at an amazing pace this season. A transfer from Mt. Sac Junior College, he made a name for himself at last year’s prestigious Mt. Sac Relays by finishing fourth behind Olympians C.J. Hunter and John Godina and last year’s NCAA champion, Southern Methodist’s Janus Robberts.

He came to Wisconsin in January with a career-best put of 61 feet, 9 inches. In less than five months, he has added 17 inches to that mark and is within striking distance of the 65-8 (20 meters) put he’ll need to qualify for the Olympics.

That’s an astonishing achievement in a discipline where progress is measured in fractions of inches.

“I think it’s very possible,” Holmstrom said. “When I start peaking, I think 65-8 shouldn’t be a problem.”

He finished second at last month’s Drake Relays with a put of 61-5 3/4, and he was the Big Ten’s athlete of the week after tying Wisconsin’s outdoor record on May 6 with a career-best 63-2 at the Wisconsin Twilight meet.

For good measure, he also set the Wisconsin school record with a 182-5 effort in the hammer throw and set a personal record with a 185-4 performance in discus.

cles and sizable belly of the best shot-putters, but he is nimble enough to exchange a leaping chest bump with Napier before competing. He is exceptionally agile on his size-13 feet, and he excels at soccer, basketball and skiing despite his size.

He sports the chunky arm mus “Perhaps in a lifetime, I’ll never see another one with his potential,” Napier said. “He’s the kind of athlete that if he wanted to, he’d play any sport he wanted.”

But Holmstrom, a native of Orebro, Sweden, is a gentle giant, with a quick sarcastic wit, a weakness for ABBA and little competitive interest in any sport outside track and field.

He can only laugh when he’s asked why he participates in the shot put instead of basketball or football. It takes too much energy to explain the importance of field events in Sweden.

“I started with everything--jumping, running and throwing, and I just liked track better,” Holmstrom said. “I didn’t like basketball as much. I never tried hockey.”

Holmstrom chose to come to the United States two years ago because he thought his training demanded it. He said athletes are allowed “bigger dreams” here than in Sweden.

Napier’s training philosophies and his friendship with Hank Krachir, Holmstrom’s coach at Mt. Sac, won his recruiting battle with Oregon, USC, Purdue and Michigan. Napier has coached eight All-Americans at Wisconsin, but Holmstrom is, well, his biggest challenge yet.

Holmstrom has been training rigorously in recent weeks, with a mind toward gearing up for the postseason championships. Shot-putters often train until a few days before a critical meet, then stop altogether to gather energy for the one or two puts that determine everything.

“It’s scary, because I’m wondering in the back of my mind what he’s going to throw once he’s been resting,” Napier said. “His last coaches said that when you rest him, he’s incredible. I’m wondering what incredible looks like.”

With the NCAA outdoor championships coming up on May 31, Holmstrom is focused on qualifying for the Olympics. Napier is putting no limits on his student’s future.

“Who knows what his potential is? He’s got the heart of a lion, and he loves nothing more than throwing. With that combination, along with his size and his agility, who knows?”