Elite throwers are increasingly using social media to expand the reach of their disciplines, combining humour, behind-the-scenes content and training insights to attract new audiences in sports that often receive limited mainstream attention.
Despite competing in power-based events such as the shot put, discus, javelin and hammer throw, many athletes have built online communities by sharing light-hearted videos alongside technical aspects of their sport.
“This is a fun place to share a sport that I love,” said Canadian shot putter Sarah Mitton, who added a Commonwealth Games gold medal to her collection this week.
“Throwing is a very niche sport. Not everybody has picked up a shot put.”
Platforms such as Instagram have enabled athletes like Mitton to explain their events, showcase their training routines and build direct relationships with fans outside traditional media coverage.
While Indian Olympic javelin champion Neeraj Chopra boasts around nine million Instagram followers and American shot put world record holder Ryan Crouser has more than 200,000, most throwers have cultivated smaller but highly engaged audiences numbering in the tens of thousands.
Mitton believes building a personal connection is the key to attracting new followers before introducing them to the sport itself.
“People connect with the person first,” she said. “People meet me. People follow me. People see this. And they become shot-put fans because they want to support me.”
Rather than targeting established athletics fans, throwers hope to reach people who might never otherwise watch their events.
That visibility has financial importance as well. Compared with higher-profile disciplines such as sprinting, throwers often struggle to attract sponsorship, making it more difficult to fund coaching, travel and elite-level preparation.
Social media has helped bridge part of that gap.
“It’s helping me fund the sport and make a living,” Mitton said, referring to partnerships with corporate sponsors and sports companies.
More importantly, she values the dedicated communities that have emerged around the sport.
“One of the comments I get is: ‘Goodness, I never thought that on a Friday night I’d be sitting in front of my TV watching women shot-putters on a live stream I had to find,'” she said.
“That’s so cool. I have all these little pockets of people all over the world. They connect with you on social media on a more personal level, they’re invested in you, then they start following the sport.”
