Amazing discus record that has stood the test of time
On April 26, 1981, Meg Ritchie set a British discus record of 67.48m at the Mt Sac Relays in Walnut, California. Amazingly, 40 years later, it is still the national record, making it the oldest UK record in an Olympic discipline.
Even more staggering is that it has also survived all these years as US national collegiate record – and it is the oldest women's NCAA record to boot. The discus aside, Ritchie was a fine shot putter as well, holding the UK record in the 1980s, whereas her Scottish record at that event of 18.99m has stood since 1983.
Ritchie’s mighty discus mark is six weeks older than Seb Coe’s British 800m record. Although whereas the current crop of 800m men could feasibly threaten Coe’s mark soon, Ritchie’s record looks unbeatable with only five British women in history breaking the 60-metre barrier and the closest challenger being Jade Lally with 65.10 in 2016.
Such is the standard of her discus best, it would have won gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, plus silver at both London 2012 and Rio 2016. Ritchie’s status as Commonwealth record-holder, however, has gone. Dani Stevens of Australia holds that mark with 69.64m.
Little did anyone realise at the time how long Ritchie’s discus record would survive. At the time in AW it received modest coverage, partly because there was no social media and results from an event like the Mt Sac Relays might have taken a while to reach the AW offices. She did feature on the front cover a few weeks later, though.
"I remember being overlooked for a European Championships one year," she told me via email this week. "It was because the selectors did not appreciate my 13 qualifying marks being done in the US.
"I remember talking to my father and telling him 'I am going to put that British record so far out that no one will break it until the year 2000'.
"I guess I missed the prediction by a few years."
Ritchie was ahead of her time in many ways. She was born in Kirkcaldy on July 6, 1952, just two years after the Scottish town’s best-known sporting star, the darts player Jocky Wilson.
Yet while Wilson became a huge name after winning the world title in 1982 and 1987, Ritchie competed in relative anonymity in an event that was considered at the time to be ‘unfeminine’.
At the 1980 Moscow Olympics she was the only Western woman in the final and finished ninth. Four years later, at an LA Games hit by an Eastern Bloc boycott, she improved to a fine fifth place – the best ever by a Briton in this event.
In 1982 she scored a rare shot and discus double at the NCAA division one championships and the same year won gold at the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane with a Games record of 62.98m to win by more than four metres.
“The catalogue of superlatives, viewed now, beggars belief, but in the middle distance-dominated era of Coe and Ovett in which she performed, she was never properly appreciated,” the Scottish athletics writer Doug Gillon wrote in the Herald newspaper in 2014.
Ritchie retired in 1984 after those LA Games and went on to become head of strength and conditioning at the University of Arizona. She married the strength guru Mike Stone and became director of the centre of excellence for sport science and coach education at East Tennessee State University. In 1999 she returned briefly to Scotland to become national coach but resigned in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games in 2002.
“People said I was too strong to throw far,” she told Gillon seven years ago. “Sitting here now, with that record being so old, maybe I was strong enough to throw far.
“When I first started, I weighed 12 stone. I was always a big girl and was never embarrassed. I went up to almost 20 stone doing weights. Now I am back to just over 11. Take it off when you don't need it. I have lost a whole person!"
On the critics who used to describe women’s throwing as ‘unfeminine’,” she said: “That was the view when I started. I remember walking into a class in Arizona and heard the word ‘freak’. I sat down and thought: ‘I am going to be competing at the Moscow Olympics. What will you be doing?’”
On her long-standing UK record and Scottish marks, she said: “There's no reason why a Scottish girl, if she lifts the weights, can't throw what I threw. I don't want to come back in my 80s and get wheeled out in my bathchair for the crowd to be told: ‘Here's the Scottish record-holder’.
“I want somebody to break those records. I wanted to coach somebody to do it, but could not find anyone committed to do the strength work required.”
Ritchie says her opinions have not changed much since her interview with Gillon in 2014. "I really want someone to break that record and there is no reason why a Scot cannot do it," she told AW. "It really has stood so long."
» For the latest athletics news, events coverage and updates, check out the AW homepage and our social media channels on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram
