Estonia’s Kanter Celebrates Gold Medal in the Discus His Way NYTimes.com

BEIJING — The discus gold medalist clutched a large can of sardines, spun and flung it as far as he could. It sailed past the compact disc, the round cracker, the Oreo and the cabbage head.

Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Doug Kanter for The New York Times

It appears no object is safe around Estonia’s Gerd Kanter, who playfully threw a variety of objects, including this cabbage.

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Olympic glory aside, Kanter’s cracker throw boomeranged and fell at his feet, but the sardine can sailed 30 meters. The fish flew about 20 meters.

Enlarge This Image Christophe Simon/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Kanter competing in the discus, which he won with a toss of 68.82 meters, or 225 feet 9 ½ inches.

Enlarge This Image Jens Buettner/European Pressphoto Agency

After his victory, Kanter rejoiced by sprinting down the track draped in the Estonian flag.

Estonia’s Gerd Kanter then picked up a fish. It was palm-sized, rather flat and somewhat disc-shaped.

“It doesn’t smell good,” he said.

Kanter had agreed to demonstrate his throwing skill on Friday, but rather than bringing his own discuses — he usually travels with about five of them, and routinely is forced to pantomime their purpose to skeptical security officials — he was supplied with a few disc-shaped objects by The New York Times.

The conditions at Chaoyang Park were ideal, at least for regulation discuses, if not for flying fish. There was a bit of a headwind slightly from the right, good for lift. Kanter threw the fish about 20 meters. It fell well short of the sardines.

“We have a clear winner here,” Kanter said as he paced the distances with long strides. The sardines had gone about 30 meters. Kanter was curious, and he flung them again. Fifty meters, surely a world record for canned sardines.

This is a good time to be Gerd Kanter. With a handful of discus throws on Tuesday night — one of which went 68.82 meters (about 225 feet 9 ½ inches) — he won the gold medal. He has been keeping it in his shorts pocket, eagerly pulling it out for anyone who asks to see it.

“People want to see it,” he said. He estimated that he could throw it 30 meters.

But what turned Kanter, 29, into one of the unlikeliest of Olympic celebrities was not just the medal, but also how he celebrated after his victory at the 91,000-seat National Stadium. He was handed a blue, black and white Estonian flag and began to carry it around the track. His enthusiasm drew the crowd’s attention.

Then Kanter noticed the starting blocks for the sprints.

“I just got this good idea I should use it to promote my country and my flag,” he said.

So he backed his feet into the blocks and bent his 6-foot-5, 276-pound body forward. He shot out and ran alone down the 100-meter straightaway, the flag over his shoulders.

“There’s some natural speed in my feet,” Kanter said. He said he once ran 100 meters in a respectable 11.2 seconds before devoting himself to the discus.

Kanter then made like the Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt. He posed and shot an invisible arrow into the sky. Fans cheered wildly. Replays and photographs traveled around the world. An everyman folk hero was born.

His fiancée, Liina Partel, watched Kanter from the stands, not sure what he was going to do. He admitted that he wanted to do something clever, just in case he won, but did not know what it would be until he did it.

“I think it’s great,” she said. “He’s very emotional. And he likes humor.”

“Do you say I’m a clown?” Kanter asked.

“No,” Partel said. “Like a little boy.”

Kanter had really wanted to be Michael Jordan, and his bedroom used to be plastered with posters of the former basketball star. And he admitted that he had dreamed of being a singer.

“I’m not saying I have a good voice, but it looks like it would be fun,” he said.

Instead, Kanter is wildly famous in Estonia as a champion, the country’s lone gold medalist at these Games; a doubles sculls team won a silver. His performance coincided with the annual song festival, part of Estonia’s independence celebration in Tallinn. Thousands watched replays of Kanter’s performance on large screens, and saw live broadcasts of his interviews.

Kanter said he would receive 100,000 euros (about 0,000) from his country as an award for the gold medal, and probably much more from sponsors. He will be Estonia’s flag bearer in the closing ceremony.

He spent the days after his victory seeing sights like the Great Wall, doing interviews and being wooed by sponsors. Someone at Nike joked with Kanter about creating a new specialty shoe.

“He said in the future, maybe we should design shoes like James Bond,” Kanter said. “One time it’s a throwing shoe. The next time, you push a button and spikes come out the bottom for the run.”

But on this occasion, Kanter was throwing, not running. And some of the objects he had been given looked like specks in his huge hands. “For some stuff, for sure I’ll have to use a different technique,” he said. “Like the cookie, I may have to throw like a stone.”

He tried the cabbage first. He spun and flung it sidearmed, like a discus, and it came apart in flight.

“Not very good aerodynamics,” Kanter said.

Then came the cracker, which hit a breeze and boomeranged back, two steps away.

“For a cracker, the wind was too strong,” he said. “If there was no wind I could probably add a couple of meters. Now it comes backward.”

The CD fluttered. The Oreo broke apart. The paper plate (“I’ve got a chance for a negative result here,” he said) fell to his feet.

The floppy fish flew well, but was hard to hold and get a strong rotation. But the can of sardines spun like a gyroscope as it pierced the sky. Kanter seemed intrigued.

There was only one other disc-shaped object that would seem perfect for spinning and sailing into the sky. Kanter pulled his gold medal out of his pocket. He was not about to let it go.

“It’s a pretty good shape for throwing,” he said. “But the fish was best.”

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