Rebels sign Olympic shot putter

[psychic duck]

http://www.espnscrum.com/super-rugby-2013/rugby/story/175158.html

The Melbourne Rebels have signed Australia's number one shot putter Dale Stevenson, who finished 26th at the London Olympic Games.

Previous players to have made the shot put to rugby transition include Tom Court who was a triallist for the Australian 2004 Olympic team but missed the cut, and later has gone onto have a good professional rugby career in Ireland with Ulster. And Victor Costello who represented Ireland at the 1992 Olympics finishing 22nd, and went onto have a long career with Leinster and play at World Cups with Ireland, Costello's old athletics coach David Fagan is now the strength and conditioning coach of the Leinster academy. Andrew Sheridan also used to do shot put and did well at English schools level before concentrating on rugby.

 

[Amobokoboko]

Good for him. Should do good in the frontrow.

 

[nickdnz]

Yeah - interesting. Big Bill Cavubati held the Fijian shot put record for over a decade.http://www.hurricanes.co.nz/team/players/bill-cavubati

 

[Amobokoboko]

The info on the site is incomplete as it shows that he only played 1 season for the Cannes, massive player tho

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Think one of the Team GB shotputters at this olympics used to be a rugby player - think he was at Wasps academy or something?
Will google it.


Edit: It was Lawrence Okoye, the discus thrower.
Bloody hell, he was a winger as well! 6ft6 20st!

 

[jcahill1]

Think one of the Team GB shotputters at this olympics used to be a rugby player - think he was at Wasps academy or something?
Will google it.


Edit: It was Lawrence Okoye, the discus thrower.
Bloody hell, he was a winger as well! 6ft6 20st!

Apparently he could do the 100m in 11 seconds and was 18 stone at schololboy level. Imagine him running down the wing at you...

 

[Draggs]

Okoye trained for a week with the Saracens around the start of the this season, I think.
I'll pull out my papers later, it was in an issue of the Rugby Paper.

 

[Peat]

Okoye was at London Irish, that's how it was reported at the time - although having just read an article, apparently he's considering a return (as of August), and apparently he was at Pests after LI. Think he was in the same school (Whitgift) team as some pretty big names, lets just check that... yeah, Elliot Daly and Marland Yarde. Some team. Although if you believe the comments on the Daily Mail article, Okoye wasn't all that...