Peter Shmock ( ; Peter Carlton "Pete" Shmock; born April 29, 1950, in Detroit, Michigan) is a retired American track and field athlete, primarily known for throwing the shot put, and former Seattle Mariners coach. Currently Shmock is a personal trainer at Zum (stylized "ZUM"), a Seattle health club he founded in 2002.
High school and college athletics
Shmock went by "Pete" throughout his high school, college, and Olympic shot-put career. In 1968, while attending San Dieguito High School Academy in Encinitas, California, Shmock won first place in the California State Championships and threw 62-1 3/4 to finish fifth at the Golden West Invitational.
From 1969 to 1972 Pete Shmock competed on the University of Oregon's track and field team, the Ducks, coached by Olympic team coach Bill Bowerman. Shmock did exceptionally well at the university's annual Twilight Meet, telling a reporter, "'This is the first meet this year I've really got psyched for.'" In 1970 he broke 60 feet for the first time in his college career, and in 1971 he threw a personal best of 63-2 3/4. He threw 64-11 1/2 in 1972, setting a new personal best and qualifying him for the Olympic trials.
Ranking sixth in the U.S., Shmock did not travel to Munich for the 1972 Summer Olympics. He finished second in shot put in the NCAA that year, and he threw a lifetime best in the hammer throw of 166-11.
Shmock graduated from the University of Oregon with a bachelor's in social science in 1973.
After college, Pete Shmock competed with the Southern California Striders (also known as the Tobias Striders) in the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). He ranked among the top six shot putters in the AAU and the U.S. Nationals from 1974 to 1980.
Olympic shot put
On June 5, 1976, Shmock threw his lifetime best, 69-3, at the University of Oregon's historic Hayward Field in Eugene. Fifteen days later, on the first day of the U.S. track and field trials, he qualified for the 1976 Summer Olympics team. @ 27:17
Shmock told reporters, "'Qualifying is a very unpleasant thing to go through. It's a mental thing, and I'm glad I didn't have to take more than one throw.'" He expressed concern about over-exerting himself on the lengthy walk to get dinner in the Olympic village, saying, "'I'm just going to keep my feet up and try to rest.'"
He placed ninth in men's shot put at Montreal, a result he later described as "far worse than I'd hoped."
The summer of '76 was not all disappointment for Pete Shmock. He met Olympic hurdler Patrice Donnelly in 1975, and the pair's July romance in Montreal was well-publicized at the time. They married in August 1976, though they later divorced.
In 1977, both Shmock and Donnelly were training full-time for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. Without employment, they were struggling to pay the bills, and Shmock was frustrated by the "poor coaching, inadequate facilities, and financial insecurity" faced by athletes once they left college.
At March 1979's USSR-USA Track Meet in Fort Worth, Texas, Shmock threw 65-10 to place second, between the USSR's first-place Vladimir Kiselyov and third-place Aleksandr Baryshnikov. Such goodwill gestures between the two superpowers came to an abrupt halt on December 27, 1979, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. On April 12, 1980, the United States Olympic Committee voted to officially boycott the Moscow games.
Despite the boycott, Shmock was back at the University of Oregon's Hayward Field in Eugene for the U.S. Olympic track and field trials on June 27, 1980. Pete Shmock "surprisingly" beat Al Feuerbach and Brian Oldfield with a throw of 68-4, securing his spot on the 1980 team. Shmock was considered the top U.S. shot putter, though there was speculation that some "likely medal winners ... skipped the trials" or stopped training as intensely once the boycott was made official.
On August 25, 1980, Shmock came in second, behind Oldfield, at London's international Golden Mile meet. This was his final shot-put competition.
Pete Shmock appeared on the cover of the November 1981 issue of Power & Fitness for Every Body beside the headline "Life After The Olympic Boycott: Shot Putter Pete Shmock Turns To Surfing."
Coaching career
In 1983 Shmock joined the Seattle Mariners as a weight-training coach, and from 1994 until 1999 he was also a conditioning coach for the male and female dancers of Pacific Northwest Ballet.