Gold for Valarie Allman. Know Her Amazing Journey

Valarie Allman, United States’ record holder in the discus throw, has clinched a gold medal at Tokyo Olympics on Monday. Interestingly, she sealed the gold medal with her first throw of 68.98 metres. This is also US's first gold in track and field at the Tokyo Olympics. She beat Germany's Kristin Pudenz who took silver. Cuba's Yaime Perez clinched the bronze medal.

Here's what you need to know about Valerie Allman

She did her schooling from Silver Creek School. She also has a Master's in Communication. In a bid to train for 20201 Olympics, she had to take a break from college.

Before taking up discus throw, the athlete was into ballet, jazz, hip-hop, tap and contemporary dance. She has confessed that dancing was her first love. She also tried high jump but later got hooked to discus throwing at 14 years of age.

She invests a lot of time focussing on back exercises, focussing on her posture, her nutrition and works on her back strength. She worked throughout the year with her coach to ensure her discus throws are angled accurately. "It’s a combination of grace, strength, balance, having an awareness of your body and being able to move it with force. That’s mainly what discus throwing is.”, she had said in an interview.

She qualified for the Olympic finals with an opening throw of 66.42 meters. This was almost 3 m further than anyone else. The qualifying distance was 64 meters.

The 26-year-old Stanford graduate bagged her first gold medal at the Toyota 2019 USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships with a discus throw of 64.34 meters.

She is just the third US woman to achieve gold medal in Discus Throw. The other two are Lillian Copeland (1932) and Stephanie Brown Trafton (2008).

She set a world leading US record of 70.15m last year. With this feat, she became the 25th member of the event’s exclusive 70-meter club.

Her coach's name is Zebulon Sion. Read more here

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