Dylan Armstrong certainly gets around.
And he can toss a mean melon — as well as he does his usual 16-pound cast-iron shot.
The 2012 London Olympic finalist shot-putter won the event at the Harry Jerome Track Class on Sunday in Burnaby. He took part in a press conference Monday heralding this week’s 25th Victoria International Track Classic, gleefully tossing and smashing melons at Ship Point in the Inner Harbour as part of the promotion.
The Kamloops behemoth then boarded one of the nearby float planes to Vancouver en route to Lausanne, Switzerland, where he will definitely not be tossing melons at the big-money IAAF Diamond League meet Thursday.
His whiplash schedule has him returning to Victoria in time to toss at Centennial Stadium on Friday night.
“It’s all part of the business. I love competing,” he said.
And he will go great distances to do it.
Armstrong is among the star athletes set to compete in the Victoria International Classic along with London Olympic finalist high-jumper Mike Mason of Nanoose Bay, Olympian Diane Cummins and a wide array of athletes already qualified or those chasing qualifying standards for the 2013 IAAF world track and field championships Aug. 10-18 in Moscow.
The Victoria event is the championship final for the five-meet National Track League series and features $100,000 in prize money.
Armstrong faded to fifth place after being one of Canada’s most hyped medal prospects heading into the 2012 London Summer Games. But the genial 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games champion remains a hero to Canadian track and field fans.
And that elusive Olympic medal could soon be his. He may not have to wait until Rio 2016 to get it, either. Armstrong was fourth in the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics but bronze-medallist Andrei Mikhnevich of Belarus has since received a lifetime ban for doping, leaving open the possibility Mikhnevich will be stripped of his Beijing medal.
“I just have to wait and be patient. It’s a process,” said Armstrong, of his possible belated elevation to the Olympic podium.
“It would be totally amazing to get an Olympic medal.”
Armstrong isn’t bitter or resentful about being denied what, in the end, should have rightfully been his in Beijing and may yet turn out to be.
“There are people who are going to cheat,” he said, with a sigh of resignation to the fact.
“I can’t worry about who’s doing what. I definitely don’t believe in cheating. But there are lots of financial rewards in a place like Belarus [for Olympic medals]. The mentality is different in different countries and in different cultures.”
Doing it the right way might be the harder way.
But it’s the Armstrong way.
