Beneath The Silver Lining

Getting To Know Olympian Christian Cantwell

By Angela Potrykus

Millions watched as the three large, muscled men in navy spandex took turns throwing the 16-pound ball with chalk-dusted hands, spinning their bodies and then releasing the weight without stepping out of the circular box. The USA shot put team at last summer’s Beijing Olympics – Adam Nelson, Reese Hoffa and Christian Cantwell – were supposed to sweep these Games with a 1-2-3, but they didn’t. In fact, the only one who walked away with a medal – a silver for second place – was the Columbian Cantwell, a former Mizzou Tiger and Olympic newcomer.
“Unimpressed,” is how the self-effacing Cantwell describes his silver medaling performance. It’s not that he’s ungrateful, but he has thrown further than he did that day last August and he believed gold was within his reach.
Nonetheless, Cantwell shrugs off the Olympics as just another competition. He’s proud, but underplays himself to the max. The other American shot-putters, Hoffa and Nelson, didn’t even make the cut for the top six. At age 28, Cantwell, who also captured the 2008 World Indoor Shot Put Championship last spring, enjoys nothing more than coming home to his wife and baby in Columbia. As his mom says, “He’s just a small-town boy at heart.”

Let’s Make A Deal
The first time I spoke to Cantwell was about two years ago. I asked him to help move a car whose battery died. The small car, owned by an even smaller gymnast, had broken down in the middle of a main driving strip in the Hearnes Center parking lot. She had asked me if I could help her move it, but after about five minutes of pushing, we knew we needed someone else. Immediately, I remembered that Cantwell had been inside, practicing throws on the indoor track. Nervous and slightly embarrassed, I called out to him: “Hey Christian, you might not know me, but I’m on the track team. Um, could you help me move this car?”
He gave me a strange look, a smile, slapped his chalky hands together and said, “I’ll see what I can do.” Sure enough, he easily pushed the car 100 feet out of the way while the gymnast and I watched in awe.
“Is there anything else I can help with?” he asked.
Now, I sit casually with him in his living room in Columbia, several months after he finally brought home the Olympic medal that had eluded him for eight years. Cantwell had tried to become an Olympian three times, but he didn’t make a mark at the 2000 trials and just missed out in 2004 by placing fourth.
As we sat down, four dogs – a 200-pound mastiff, a 90-pound American bulldog and two miniature wiener dogs – came rushing in, sniffing me from head to toe. After five minutes of harried jumping and running around, the four, so different in shape and size, sat down harmoniously together as if they’d always been family.
Soon there may be a fifth.
“(My wife and I) made a deal before I went to China ‘cause I’ve always wanted another dog,” Cantwell says. “She said ‘if you win the gold in China, you can get another dog.’ I was like, ‘Come on, I think if I medal I should be able to get another dog.’ And so she gave in.”

Just Another Meet
Cantwell’s 21.09-meter throw earned him the silver medal in Beijing.
“I would’ve liked to have done a little better,” he says. “I’m not upset that I didn’t win, but I think I could have thrown a little bit further.”
Polish shot-putter Tomasz Majewski won gold with a distance of 21.51 meters, just shy of Cantwell’s best throw ever, 22.55 meters, set at the 2004 Adidas Classic meet.
After years of competing, winning world indoor championships and USA outdoor championships, the Olympics, says Cantwell, was like any other meet.
“For me, it was almost boring,” he says. “For [the USA shot-putters] it was just another championship, so we just treated it like any other day. I didn’t really notice the hype because I was so busy. After [medaling], I did a bunch of interviews, flew home and that was it.”
He did get to meet some high-profile athletes, including basketball pros Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. He even ate his first meal with a five-time Olympian, swimmer Dara Torres.
“You kind of run into everybody but you don’t get to talk much,” Cantwell says. “Everyone said ‘good job’ to me after I was done so that was nice they were watching.”

Baby Talk
I expected Cantwell to be ready to show off his silver medal, but instead he brought out something else … well, someone else. He cradled in his arms his son, Jackson Daniel Cantwell, who is perhaps one of the largest 5-month-olds in Missouri. Jackson weighed 11 pounds, 2 ounces at birth and was 23 inches long. One Olympian thrower-parent is reason enough to have a big baby, who at 4 months was the size of a 1-year-old, but two Olympian thrower-parents? Now, that’s a guarantee.
Across from Cantwell sits his wife, Teri Steer; she became Teri Cantwell in 2005. Cantwell’s eyes coyly dart to hers; he smiles and jokingly admits that she pursued him at first. “Yeah, she was a cougar.”
Teri, who is five years older than her husband, boasts athletic accolades of her own. A graduate of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, she competed in the shot put at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. She’s a good-looking woman whose strength can be intimidating, but whose pretty face emits a warm, welcoming feeling as she beams at her husband and child.
Cantwell, on the other hand, is a man whose chest and shoulders are so large and broad, it’s tiring to imagine having to carry them around all the time. A 6-foot-5-inch, 330-pound man might look awkward holding a baby, but Cantwell doesn’t. He was just as big as a baby, but not nearly as long, says his mom, Jackie.
Cantwell sits slumped comfortably on the couch with Jackson nestled in the crook of his left arm sucking a bottle. The Cantwells admit their baby is big, but they are quick to assure that he’s not fat.
“What’s weird is that he’s actually really solid and you can even see his back muscles if I pull up his shirt here,” says Cantwell. “The doctors have said he’s advanced in so many areas – muscle tone and even coordination – already.”
Baby Jackson is alert and so large that I expect him to be able to walk to me. But he can’t; he just lies there complacently. Although it’s hard to say who the child resembles at so young an age, his eyes are bright like his father’s; perhaps one day he’ll take on some of his dad’s quaint features: his small, sharp nose and large, round head that seems to pop straight up from his shoulders. Cantwell keeps his fuzzy-looking brown hair short and sprouts whiskers on his chin and face – an effect that makes him resemble a big, brown bear.

Columbia-Bound
Cantwell is a Missouri country boy from Eldon, a small town 50 miles south of Columbia. And although he’s had a Nike contract since 2003 and competed in more countries and states than he can remember, there’s nowhere he’d rather be than here.
“I don’t think Christian will ever leave Columbia,” Teri says.
Born in Osage Beach and raised in Eldon, Cantwell is the youngest of 10 children who spent much of his childhood yearning to play in the NFL.
“In junior high school, he had all these dreams about being a professional football player, which was nice and all at the time,” says mother Jackie Cantwell. “For a small-town kid, ideas like those seemed so remote and we never thought much of it. I never dreamed he’d go above and beyond and become a world champion someday.”
As a boy, Cantwell “loved school,” Jackie says. His siblings usually wanted nothing more than to get out of going, but Cantwell would never imagine “faking sick or anything like that,” his mother says.
Eldon has a population of about 5,000; his high school had less than 700 students. At Eldon High School, Cantwell played basketball, football and eventually turned to shot put for the track and field team. Once he began throwing, all he ever wanted, his mother says, was to go to the University of Missouri and throw there. Yet his current coach, Brett Halter, didn’t recruit Cantwell for the track team at first.
“They actually wanted Christian for the MU football team,” says Jackie. “And I was thinking ‘no way, you’re going to get torn up out there by those guys.’ ”
But Halter took notice at the last minute and offered him what the athletic department had left, a partial scholarship. Cantwell gladly accepted. Soon enough, he gave the coaches reason to put him on a full scholarship when he started breaking college records in his freshman year.
“He never just wanted to win or get first,” says Jackie. “He wanted to break records, and as a freshman, he broke the outdoor record and the record for the hammer throw.”
Mom never really encouraged him much, though. She says she and her husband never were athletes or had much interest in sports at all, but they allowed their children to pursue the things they wanted. Reporters always ask her if they were the reason behind his success, and she always answers with a laugh, “He didn’t do all this because of us. I think he did it in spite of us.”

CoMo Celeb
Cantwell is funny in a tough sort of way. Cordial and extremely polite, he describes himself as part of the culture of throwers, the partiers of the team, the centers of attention. They’re more likely to be loud and funny, more likely to cause a little trouble, but even more likely, says MU athletic trainer Jen Artioli, to work harder than anyone else in the weight room.
Artioli, who accompanied Cantwell to the Olympics, says even the Tiger football players are intimidated by the throwers who share the weight room. Throwers are huge men who grunt and sweat, but occasionally wink at or give a polite “hello” to women soccer players or gymnasts as they pass by.
When Cantwell is there, people look up because everyone knows him. He’ll walk in, arms so large and muscled they don’t fall naturally by his side. A silent respect resonates throughout the room; no one rushes up to him, no one wants to look like the eager fan. They want to be on his side, a part of the idea of an athlete striving to become better. They’re content to be within arms’ reach, quietly thinking and hoping, “maybe that could be me too, someday.”
Cantwell helped build the reputation of the MU throws program. Olympians in the alumni ranks always help with recruiting possibilities, but even more so when they stick around to train and give tips to up-and-coming throwers. Although Cantwell spends much of his time training and traveling for Nike, every once in a while he helps out associate head track coach Halter with the throwers.
“Having been part of Columbia for so long – nearly 10 years – I’ve seen so many changes and so many people grow up,” he says. “They seem like kids to me now, but I don’t mind helping em’ out, you know.”
For now, Cantwell will remain in Columbia with hopes that his son will “be a Tiger” someday. He continues to compete for Nike, traveling anywhere from throughout the United States to Germany, Russia or Spain, but he always returns to Columbia as soon as he can.
“I can’t imagine what I’d be doing right now if it wasn’t throwing,” he says. “It’d probably be something with athletics. But right now, I’ve still got goals ahead of me and it makes it easier to get up and get in the gym everyday if I treat it like a job. As much fun as it is, it’s easier to treat it that way.”
He plans on taking things meet by meet this year with an eye toward returning to the Olympics in 2012. As for long-term goals, there’s always baby Jackson to consider. Might he become a thrower someday?
“Oh he’ll do sports alright, some kind of sport,” Cantwell says. “It doesn’t have to be throwing, but he’ll do something.”

Photos By L.G. Patterson