Ryan Crouser beats injury and wins his third world shot put title to go with three Olympics golds

TOKYO (AP) — When he closes the book on 2025, Ryan Crouser will have six official shot put attempts on the books. And one world championship.

Talk about quality over quantity.

Nursing an excruciating elbow injury all season, the 32-year-old American cut his practice down to near nothing, got on the plane for Tokyo hoping for the best and walked out with his third straight world title Saturday.

He joined Switzerland’s Werner Günthör as the second man to win three straight shot put titles at world championships. This was the latest and most unlikely triumph for Crouser, who also has three straight Olympic titles to his name.

Did he think he had a chance, given the injury, the lack of preparation and the solid field of throwers who thought maybe, finally, they'd have their own chance to win?

“It was really tough to say, because I really haven't thrown hard, haven't seen a ball go more than 20 meters in practice," Crouser said. “So I just didn't know what was going to be in the tank tonight."

Crouser's winning throw of 22.34 meters (73 feet, 3 1/2 inches) doesn't rank in his top 10 — and yet, it is still the fifth-longest throw in the world this year. Not bad for a guy who rated the pain on a humid, still night at about a 3 or 4 out of 10 — tolerable given what he's been through over the past 12 months.

“When you're throwing well, the energy transfers through the ball, you get a nice release off the hand and it's efficient,” Crouser said. “It's the bad ones that hurt.”

Uziel Munoz of Mexico set a national record and earned a silver medal with his throw of 21.97. Italy's Leonardo Fabbri added bronze to his silver from two years ago in Budapest.

Crouser has been dealing with what's called a nerve entrapment in his elbow. At a recent MRI to gauge the injury, the techs injected contrast fluid into the joint and it leaked out to his forearm, an indicator of how severely damaged the elbow really was.

“It's been a long process," he said.

By evening's end on another fantastic night in Tokyo for the champion — he won the Olympics here in 2021, as well — Crouser might have spent more time in the hallways doing post-victory interviews than out on the field for his six throws.

His only six throws of the year.

“I just had to kind of trust that when I got in the ring I could hit the shot like I used to,” he said.

The answer to that question was hanging around his neck — another gold medal.

AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

United States' Ryan Crouser reacts as he competes in the men's shot put final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

United States' Ryan Crouser reacts as he competes in the men's shot put final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

United States' Ryan Crouser celebrates after winning the gold medal in the men's shot put final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

United States' Ryan Crouser makes an attempt in the men's shot put final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

United States' Ryan Crouser celebrates after winning the gold medal in the men's shot put final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An astronaut in need of doctors' care departed the International Space Station with three crewmates on Wednesday in NASA's first medical evacuation.

The four returning astronauts — from the U.S., Russia and Japan — are aiming for an early Thursday morning splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego with SpaceX. The decision cuts short their mission by over a month.

“Our timing of this departure is unexpected,” NASA astronaut Zena Cardman said before the return trip, “but what was not surprising to me was how well this crew came together as a family to help each other and just take care of each other.”

Officials refused to identify the astronaut who needed care last week and would not divulge the health concerns.

The ailing astronaut is “stable, safe and well cared for,” outgoing space station commander Mike Fincke said earlier this week via social media. “This was a deliberate decision to allow the right medical evaluations to happen on the ground, where the full range of diagnostic capability exists."

Launched in August, Cardman, Fincke, Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov should have remained on the space station until late February. But on Jan. 7, NASA abruptly canceled the next day’s spacewalk by Cardman and Fincke and later announced the crew’s early return. Officials said the health problem was unrelated to spacewalk preparations or other station operations, but offered no other details, citing medical privacy. They stressed it was not an emergency situation.

NASA said it would stick to the same entry and splashdown procedures at flight’s end, with the usual assortment of medical experts aboard the recovery ship in the Pacific. It was another middle-of-the-night crew return for SpaceX, coming less than 11 hours after undocking from the space station. NASA said it was not yet known how quickly all four would be flown from California to Houston, home to Johnson Space Center and the base for astronauts.

One U.S. and two Russian astronauts remain aboard the orbiting lab, just 1 1/2 months into an eight-month mission that began with a Soyuz rocket liftoff from Kazakhstan. NASA and SpaceX are working to move up the launch of a fresh four-person crew from Florida, currently targeted for mid-February.

Computer modeling predicted a medical evacuation from the space station every three years, but NASA hasn't had one in its 65 years of human spaceflight. The Russians have not been as fortunate. In 1985, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Vasyutin came down with a serious infection or related illness aboard his country’s Salyut 7 space station, prompting an early return. A few other Soviet cosmonauts encountered less serious health issues that shortened their flights.

It was the first spaceflight for Cardman, 38, biologist and polar explorer who missed out on spacewalking, as well as Platonov, 39, a former fighter pilot with the Russian air force who had to wait a few extra years to get to space because of an undisclosed health issue. Cardman should have launched last year but was bumped to make room on the way down for NASA’s Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who were stuck nearly a year at the space station because of Boeing’s capsule problems.

Fincke, 58, a retired Air Force colonel, and Yui, 55, a retired fighter pilot with the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, were repeat space fliers. Finke has spent 1 1/2 years in orbit over four missions and conducted nine spacewalks on previous flights, making him one of NASA’s top performers. Last week, Yui celebrated his 300th day in space over two station stays, sharing stunning views of Earth, including Japan’s Mount Fuji and breathtaking auroras.

“I want to burn it firmly into my eyes, and even more so, into my heart,” Yui said on the social platform X. “Soon, I too will become one of those small lights on the ground.”

NASA officials had said it was riskier to leave the astronaut in space without proper medical attention for another month than to temporarily reduce the size of the space station crew by more than half. Until SpaceX delivers another crew, NASA said it will have to stand down from any routine or even emergency spacewalks, a two-person job requiring backup help from crew inside the orbiting complex.

The medical evacuation was the first major decision by NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman. The billionaire founder of a payment processing company and two-time space flier assumed the agency’s top job in December.

“The health and the well-being of our astronauts is always and will be our highest priority,” Isaacman said in announcing the decision last week.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

This screengrab from video provided by NASA TV shows the SpaceX Dragon departing from the International Space Station shortly after undocking with four NASA Crew-11 members inside on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This screengrab from video provided by NASA TV shows the SpaceX Dragon departing from the International Space Station shortly after undocking with four NASA Crew-11 members inside on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (NASA via AP)

This photo provided by NASA shows clockwise from bottom left are, NASA astronaut Mike Fincke, Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov, NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui gathering for a crew portrait wearing their Dragon pressure suits during a suit verification check inside the International Space Station’s Kibo laboratory module, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (NASA via AP)