What are we to do about the all-time list in the women’s shot put?

It’s a dilemma that has long troubled throws enthusiasts, and a 27-year-old Dutchwoman by the name of Jessica Schilder once again brought the issue to the forefront over the weekend. On her fifth attempt at the Shanghai Diamond League, Schilder—the reigning outdoor World champ—uncorked a mammoth 21.09m toss that ended one of the discipline’s most significant droughts. For the first time since July 17, 2012, a woman threw past the 21m mark in the shot put.

With her historic effort, one that hadn’t been matched for well over a decade, Schilder landed herself all the way up to… tied for 29th on the all-time list?

That doesn’t seem right. Surely a performance of this stature, a drought-breaker like this one, would slot in substantially higher in the record books? A 14-year fallow period would end if we see a man go 9.6X in the 100m this season—and he would be tied for second fastest ever, at worst! Usually when we see long stretches of time without a particular mark populating the results sheets, it’s because it was just as hard to do in the past as it is today.

And then, there’s the women’s shot put. 35 women in world history have hit the 21m barrier (a shade under 69 feet for imperial measurement fans). 31 of those women did so between 1972 and 1999, with 28 hailing from Eastern European nations and the remaining three from China. That leaves Schilder and three other women that have hit that mark this century:

Russia’s Larisa Peleshenko, who threw 21.46m in 2000 at age 36 and served a four-year doping ban in the late 90s which wiped her 1995 World Indoor title off the board.

Belarus’s Nadzeya Ostapchuk threw 21.09m in 2005 and was once one of the most decorated women’s throwers ever before the final 7.5 seasons of her career were Thanos-snapped away due to a string of positive tests. (That 21.09m throw is actually the last mark on her World Athletics page that is still recognized.)

Finally, New Zealand’s Valerie Adams threw 21m on four occasions between 2009 and 2012. Very notably, in this context, the 10-time global champion never incurred a failed drug test or other anti-doping violation in her career that spanned over two decades. In fact, two of Adams’s 10 titles were originally won by Ostapchuk and then reallocated following her suspension.

Adams’s excellence really highlights the flaws in the record books, as her PB of 21.24m comes in at No. 23 in world history. In order to believe, without doping suspicions, the historical dominance of the all-time lists by athletes from decades ago, you need to believe that the event has simply taken a massive step back, bucking the trend of progress experienced across nearly every other discipline. Many reasonable observers do not blindly accept that.

Women’s discus faces many of the same issues, but ever-windy Ramona has served as something of an equalizing factor in that respect. Shot put can’t be helped out with favorable weather patterns in the same way, unfortunately, so the common solution presented is resetting the record books.

That’s a lot harder to do in practice than in theory. For starters, how do you land on “X” date as the new start of shot put history? That unfairly impacts athletes that were clean in your somewhat arbitrary purge window and ignores the dopers that were active after that era concluded. You can be suspicious all you want, but in the absence of actual positive tests from the Soviets and East Germans and Bulgarians and whatnot, World Athletics’s figurative hands are tied in what they can do in terms of eliminating or resetting marks.

That leaves us with one other option: change the implement! Javelin has done it a few times before, with the men’s model changing in 1986 as a result of people throwing far enough to regularly endanger officials and crowds. It created an entirely new record book while still maintaining the sanctity of the former list, as World Athletics still recognizes distinct current and old model lists and records.

A shot put is a simpler, more spherical implement that can’t be tweaked by moving the center of gravity forward, so what about tinkering with the weight? Two years ago there was a widely-lambasted report that Seb Co and Co. were thinking about making the women’s shot put lighter to make it more exciting.

It’s this newsletter’s opinion that that’s a silly proposal. The excitement of the event is very much there. Just look at round six from Tokyo…. It was awesome! And every Diamond League brings the opportunity for a different winner. So our forthcoming (very realistic, extremely serious) solution doesn’t hinge on needlessly cooking the distance of throws to somehow make the event more interesting or exciting. It doesn’t need that! We’re just trying to allow the current generation of athletes to get the historic recognition they deserve.

Instead, let’s up the weight… by 0.01 kilogram! It’s not a meaningful difference and shouldn’t change the event in any meaningful way. It would still allow for valid comparisons between clean throwers of different eras, while also making excitement about world and continental records a possibility. Who knows what contract incentives and bonuses the 4.01kg shot might open up? It also makes marketing to outside fans easier if you can bill clashes between a handful of the 10 best women in world history instead of a kneejerk reaction that this current group of athletes is lightyears behind the 80s and 90s.

Again, we must reiterate that this is not a perfect solution. In fact, it’s not even a realistic solution! But it’s a conversation worth having, because Natalya Lisovskaya’s 22.63m world record is one that likely will stand the test of time until someone builds a throwing facility inside a hurricane’s eyewall.

Until that day comes, though, we implore you not overlook how impressive a performance like the one Schilder just had is simply because it’s over 1.5m back of the world record.

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