Three-time Olympic gold medalist Ryan Crouser shares the special bond and loyalty of having his dog, Koda, as a partner on the training field and at home.
Some families create great actors, others talented musicians. For the Crouser family of rural Boring, Oregon, they throw shot put and discus better than most.
Ryan Crouser, who won his third Olympic gold medal for shot put in Paris this year, descended from a gifted track and field family. His dad, Mitch, was a shot put thrower at Idaho and an alternate on the 1984 U.S. Olympic team; his uncle, Dean Crouser, was a three-time NCAA champion at Oregon, winning the shot put and discus in 1982 and the discus again in 1983; his other uncle, Brian Crouser, was a two-time NCAA javelin champion (1982, 1985) and was an Olympian in 1988 and 1992; finally, another cousin, Sam Crouser, was a two-time NCAA javelin champion at Oregon.
View this post on Instagram
So, it’s no surprise that Ryan Crouser is now etching his own name into the Olympic history books. He is a three-time Olympic gold medalist (2016, 2020, 2024) and a three-time World Champion in the shot put and discus. He currently holds the world record in the shot put, both indoors and outdoors.
At the top of his game, Crouser barely takes time between bites to keep his six-foot-seven, 320-pound physique in Olympic-ready shape, but when he does, he’s an avid outdoorsman who enjoys fishing and duck hunting. And Crouser does it all with his best friend, two-year-old black lab Koda, by his side.
The relationship between Crouser and Koda spawned a partnership with Nulo, an Austin-based dog and cat food company focused on ensuring high-protein, low-carb foods for athletic pets and their doting owners. Between weight training sessions and duck-hunting jaunts, Crouser and I managed to get together for a phone interview about the importance of the human-dog bond and what part nutrition plays in Koda’s active lifestyle.
Cowboys & Indians: Your partnership with Nulo is all about the connection between pets and their athlete/owners and nutrition. Tell me how you and Koda met.
Ryan Crouser: She (Koda) just turned two. We’d been wanting to get a dog, and with my schedule it's a little bit tough... I kind of have to get one in September because I'm traveling from April really until September where I'm here for a week, gone for a week kind of thing. But I wanted to really have six solid months with her, and those six months are really developmental… We were waitlisted for another litter that ended up not happening — the breeding didn't take, and so that kennel pointed me in the direction of another local semi-local one. I reached out to her and we pulled it together, and we ended up getting Koda. It worked out really well and we been super happy with her. Funny enough, my parents actually have her sister from the same litter, so the two of them have a great time when they get together.
C&I: People tend to get the right dogs. Can you talk about now, two years in with Koda — the personalities you guys have and how those gel — especially when you guys are outdoors? I know you guys do some training together and swimming and different things like that. Talk to me about that relationship.
CROUSER: She’s up for anything. She's a very energetic, enthusiastic dog. She has a lot of energy and when she wants to be extremely focused. She loves fishing, and I've never seen a dog that loves fishing and fish as much as she does. It's a crossover from what she's meant to do. I mean, she's a working dog. She's meant to be a bird dog, but then it carries over to fishing as well. So yeah, she'll be laser beam-focused. If I'm fishing, she watches every single cast from the moment it hits the water until it gets back to the boat and then watches every single cast. And if you set the hook and miss a fish, she'll let you know and start whining and just be the most disappointed dog. She makes missing fish hurt a little more.
C&I: The partnership you have with Nulo is all about that nutrition. And I’ve read an interview with you before about obviously how important your nutrition is with what you're trying to do. Were you always into pet nutrition or is this something a little bit different with Koda?
CROUSER: I've always been big on nutrition, and it's a lot of it comes from my experience as an athlete. One of the cornerstones of performance is nutrition. Since I've been training year-round, focused on track since my freshman year of college, it's been a big focus. When we got Koda, it was a big focus of mine of to make sure that she's getting the best that food and nutrition that she can get. And so the Nulo partnership was an awesome partnership because it came about organically. I feel like those are truly the best brand partnerships. It’s been great. With [Koda], you notice the performance as well, just like you would in an athlete. She's got more energy on the top end, and she's just kind of more levelheaded. She's not as erratic. The quality of dog food between a low-end brand and a high-end brand varies so much. You can really tell the difference. So, it's a partnership that I was really happy to endorse because it aligned with my own values. From my own experience, I've known how important nutrition is. I know that Koda would do anything for me, so the least I can do is give her the best food that I can.
C&I: You did something with Nulo around the Olympics. Can you talk to that for a second?
CROUSER: We’ve just done the Nulo Fuel incredible campaign around the Olympics. The focus is on elite athletes and the importance of nutrition and the focus, and then having that go along with the pets. It takes that performance mindset and uses it to overlap with pet nutrition and fuel has been the goal of the partnership. And [Koda’s] been a huge part of, for me, not just on the nutrition side of things, but just of the day-to-day. I mean, she's out there at every single practice — I train at the house, so she's out there. She's watched more throws in the last two years than anybody. She's in the weight room with me. She’s a fantastic training partner. So I try to find that littlw the joy and enthusiasm she has for the most monotonous thing, whether it's just I have her sit for 30 seconds between sets and then she's just so excited at the end when I give her that release from sitting, I'm trying to find that level of enthusiasm for things that, to a person, seem monotonous in just day-to-day training.
C&I: Obviously you’re an elite athlete as well, just like Koda is. You’ve reached what I think a lot of people would consider a mountaintop in your sport multiple times. Where do you go from here as an elite athlete? What’s the next step in your career?
CROUSER: I just focus on kind of feeling like I'm competing against myself. And that's not to say that I'm at the best right now and no one's even close because the sport is extremely talented right now. It's the best the event has ever been. It's more so the approach of at the end of the day, I can only control how far I throw. If somebody else beats me, I can't control how far they threw. It's just my own performance. So the same thing that motivated me when I was in high school and early college of trying to throw farther is still what motivates me because I think I can still throw farther and continue to push my personal best out and compete against myself. That feeling of being the best you've ever been when you throw a [personal record] is something really special. That's what continues to motivate me to try to be better.
C&I: We know you’re an avid outdoorsman and you can't overlook the cowboy hat you wear on the podium. Talk to me for a second about where you grew up in rural Oregon. How did that play into who you became later on?
CROUSER: If if I wasn't in school or playing a sport growing up, I was running around outside building forts. I grew up doing a lot outdoors and Oregon was a fantastic state for that. I grew up hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, all of that. I had a passion for all of those things kind of develop early. I try to work it into my schedule. As a professional track and field athlete, some of the bigger trips had to take a backseat. I can't do those week-long backpacking trips or international trips like what I dream about doing, but the one nice thing, especially about being athlete, is that you can train four to six hours a day, and you have a chunk of time outside of that, as long as it's not really impacting your recovery in the next day's training in a negative way, [which] allows for some outdoor activities. I do a lot of fishing, a lot half day trips. I actually went duck hunting this morning… You squeeze them in where you can.
C&I: At Cowboys & Indians, we interview a lot of people wearing cowboy hats. Can you talk for a second about being able to be on that world stage but still being the same guy that grew up in Oregon?
CROUSER: There’s a picture of me when I was little wearing my uncle's cowboy hat and I was wearing my cowboys and Indians cartoon pajamas, and a towel wrapped around my shoulders as like a cape. But the cowboy hat was way too big and it was way over my eyes. I think I was four or five. I grew up loving cowboy hats… and then went to University of Texas. In track and field, it can get a little monotonous for the fans because when you're competing with six or eight guys in almost identical shoe brand uniforms, it can be a little bit difficult as an athlete to differentiate yourself. So, I wore the cowboy hat over there just as something different. And then the next time I went over and I didn't have it, I had way more questions of, “Why aren't you wearing the cowboy hat?” Instead of “Why were you wearing the cowboy hat?” It really caught on quickly and was accepted really well. Yeah, so when you see someone six-foot-seven, 320-[pounds] wearing a cowboy hat, I really stand out.
Follow Ryan Crouser on Instagram and YouTube. Visit Nulo to fuel your canine companion like Koda.
