He Won A Gold With An Adjustment Learned Through Age And Determination

August 17, 2024 3 min read

Joe celebrates in Sweden with his son Josh and his grandkids.

By Ray Glier

Geezer Jocks like Joe Greenberg don’t get anxious when things go sideways, or not as planned. They figure it out. They adjust.

It’s why Joe, 74, the oldest competitor in the Men's 70-74 Javelin, won a gold medal at the World Masters Athletics Championships in Sweden on Wednesday.

He adjusted, like Geezer Jocks do in all sorts of endeavors.

There was a sudden crosswind coming from the right at the Bjorlanda throwing venue in Gothenburg. Greenberg, who was in second place after four of six throws, watched the wind flatten out the throws of competitors throwing before him.

So with his fifth throw, Joe aimed right and high. It was a tip he learned from a throws coach at LSU and he tucked it away.

“It seems counterintuitive, you think the wind is from the right and you would throw to the middle and let it carry it to the left,” Greenberg said. “I noticed it was tipping the javelin over and down to the left for the competitors. You want it turn over.

“I made that adjustment and aimed high and right. I wanted to get over the crosswind.”

Greenberg delivered his best throw of 45.01 meters to beat Finland’s Markku Rautasalo, who went 43.97.

I’ll say it once more. You can teach an old dog new tricks. They are not too proud. They understand they don’t know it all. They learn at 74, just as they did at 24.

“Every time I go out, I learn something,” Joe said. “It makes me feel young because you're learning stuff.”

That’s a strong lesson to hold on to from this story.

Greenberg trained 29 of 30 days leading up to the WMA. His grandkids live in Denmark and he wanted to do well for them when they came across the Kattegat strait to watch.

He beat the Fins, the French, the Czechs, and the Germans with his throw of 45.01 meters. Joe beat them on their turf, Europe, where javelin is a sanctified event in track & field.

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In 1984, Greenberg worked for ABC Sports in Los Angeles. He had access to athletes, like the great hurdler Edwin Moses and the multi-talented Jackie-Joyner Kersee. He became friends with them and when they came back to LA in the years after the Games, Greenberg trained with them.

Joe’s son, Josh, accompanied him on some of the training trips and the athletes had one thing in common, which Greenberg is grateful for having a lasting impact on his son.

“What is achieved comes from within,” Joe said. “They all had that.”

He also learned this.

“They (Moses, Jackie Joyner-Kersee) were giving and thoughtful when they don’t have to be,” Greenberg said.

Joe started throwing the javelin when he was 34 years old and it wasn’t easy to get traction in the sport. No one would trust a novice with a “lethal weapon.” There was also the matter of climbing over barbed wire just to access a big enough space to throw.

And that makes the win this week at WMA sweeter. There are throwing venues all over Europe for Masters athletes, which are much more refined venues than the grassy steeplechase track in the U.S. where Greenberg once worked out.

His tips:

For you throwers, Greenberg said, “Warm up for practice the way you warm up for meets. Winners do same thing every meet.” Pay attention to that because Joe learned from some masters.

If you want to see Joe’s technique, here is a video.

Three other things explain this gold medalist.

As a kid athlete, Joe wanted to be responsible for his own results, so he did the pole vault and high jump. He started working out with weights when he was 10 and focused on diet when he was in middle school.

If he seemed driven, there was good reason. Greenberg’s father fought the Nazis in The Battle of The Bulge and survived the bitter cold of the Ardennes Forest. His dad saw the concentration camps where Jews, with his DNA, were murdered.

There is one other thing that explains Javelin Joe.

“I like to see things fly,” Greenberg said.