World champion shot putter Chase Jackson headlines elite field at Iron Wood Classic

RATHDRUM – Chase Jackson made her first United States team in 2019, tacked a full 4 feet on her personal best in the shot put and zoomed from promising to rank third in the world.

This was not, however, a duvet she pulled up to her chin for comfort.

Because a chunk of her being that year was an empty feeling when she took off that national uniform.

“I didn’t do so well,” she said.

This is certainly relative. In the sapping 97-degree heat of Doha, Qatar, Jackson finished seventh in track and field’s world championships, hardly humiliating for a global “rookie.” But it did not put her on the podium, and she could not summon enough of her best when the competition could, and so it wasn’t her achievements that year that sent her back to work motivated.

Or what made her the world champion the next two times around, in 2022 and 2023.

“I’ve always had this thing when I’ve gone to major events and maybe not done what I should have done, I tend to come back the next time and do more,” she said. “I want to be at that next level. I don’t want to mess up at majors.”

Which brings Jackson back to work this weekend out on Highway 53.

The American record-holder is part of a stellar field at the 10th Iron Wood Classic on Saturday at the club’s throwing center east of Rathdrum. The gathering includes another U.S. record-holder in hammer thrower DeAnna Price, who set her first one at Iron Wood back in 2018, as well as the 2024 Olympic silver medalist in that event, Annette Echikunwoke. In all, 24 former Olympians are entered, including 16 Americans.

Jackson is one of those, too – but as in her first World Championships in 2019, her result in Paris left her a little broken. Ranked No. 1 in the world the previous two years, she fouled her first two throws in qualifying and managed just 57 feet, 9 inches on her third, winding up 17th and out of the finals.

“A blunder,” she said, “but I’ve taken that and had the best start to my year, ever. I’ve had one training personal best after another. You’ve got to have the memory of a goldfish and just trust yourself. You have your (sad) moment and move on. Instead of the bad breaking my confidence, it’s helping me learn.”

That was clear in her first meet after the Olympics last August, when she blasted a world-leading throw of 67-8 to beat Olympic champ Yemisi Ogunleye. This spring, after a bronze medal at the world indoors, she threw a world-leading outdoor mark of 67-3 in Shanghai, then added 4 more inches a month later in the Netherlands.

Jackson grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where she didn’t just throw things a long way in the thin air. She was a four-time State 4A champion at 100 meters on top of golds in the shot and javelin. At Oklahoma State, she put that fast-twitch explosiveness to work in the throws alone and was NCAA runner-up as a senior.

But her progress was somewhat fitful until changing to the rotation style before 2019. Then when two bouts of COVID caused her to lose 20 pounds and blew up her Olympic hopes in 2021, she made another switch, to British coach Paul Wilson.

“I am the queen of change,” she laughed. “Not in life, but in technique. I’ll go to the same restaurant and have the same thing every single time, but I’ll change something in my throwing the day before a meet.”

This would seem to weigh against consistency, what with all the elements to the rotation. But that’s not reflected in the record. In her two World Championships wins – in Eugene in 2022 and Budapest the next year – she put the competition on its heels with big first throws and did the same at the 2023 Diamond League final in Eugene where she set her American record of 68-1½.

She’d like to do it again – “just to make it safer from the girls for a little bit,” she said. One of them, long-time rival Maggie Ewen, will be in the ring Saturday, too – both chasing Jackson’s meet record of 63-8¼ set in 2020.

“I haven’t been back since I kind of hit the circuit and got into the European meets,” she said. “I was talking to Maggie and told her I think I want to do Iron Wood this year. I want to come back to the kind of meets that took me in, that cared about us before we went and threw bombs.

“Hopefully, I can throw an AR there. Quote me on that. I’m ready, I think, and there’s not a better place to do it.”