Kristjan Ceh: How growing up on a farm helped me become a world class athlete
Find out about the early years of the discus world champion who is targeting more success in 2023.
Athletics
From a rural dairy farm in Slovenia to becoming one of the big cheeses in athletics - Kristjan Ceh has taken an unlikely route to the top.
He never intended to pursue a career in track and field. Growing up, he wasn’t a fan of sport, had poor eyesight and was more likely to be found on his parents’ farm, doing the messiest of all the jobs: mucking out the cows.
Yet in 2022, he was the dominant force in the men’s discus, becoming World Champion, grabbing European silver and winning the prestigious Diamond League title. It was a long way from his childhood growing up on the farm in Ptuj in the eastern side of the small European nation.
Although he didn’t realise it at the time, he can now see how the life on the farm helped with his physical prowess.
“We have a small farm at home, we have cows for milking and working in the barn and in the field. When I was small, I was living there, I was there most of my life,” he shares with Olympics.com in an exclusive interview ahead of the 2023 Diamond League season.
“I did get a little strength there. Not gym strength, but real power. Mostly when I was working still (on the farm), I was still at school. I was clearing the poops from the cows and feeding them. Mostly it required a shovel and with the hands, not with much machinery. And some field work, moving hay.”
Kristjan Ceh: Growing up
Sport was not something Ceh initially gave too much thought to growing up. “I started after grammar school with athletics,” he explains. “But before that, I was not really a sport person. Anything with a ball, or athletics, or running, I was not a fan. I am the only one in my family who started and the only one still in sport.”
But one day changed it all. "One teacher brought a shot to school and said ‘Ok, just try to shot put this’ and I was quite good. I had the strength and then my first club coach said: ‘do you want to come to try out?’ and that’s how I started. By 16, I was 1.99m tall, so I was quite big. Just a skinny dude.”
Height is an asset Ceh is not short on. He now stands at 2.06m and is a towering presence even in an event notable for the size of its competitors.
The 24-year-old puts his height down to a great grandparent he never got to meet. “It’s hard to explain, but they say my father’s grandmother was two heads bigger than his grandfather. So, it’s probably from the father’s side. I didn’t see her. My father is about 1.90m and my mother 1.70, so nothing drastically tall.”
Alongside his height, his ever-present chunky glasses also mark him out as a distinctive figure in the throwing circle. His vision is -4.0 in both eyes, which means he is very short-sighted too. But none of it has prevented this unlikely athlete’s upward trajectory in the sport.
Kristjan Ceh on working with discus great Gerd Kanter
In his first major international event, Ceh failed to record a distance at the 2017 European under 20 Championships in Grosseto, Italy. But two years later, he became European under 23 champion in Gavle, Sweden, and represented his country at his first World Championships in Doha, Qatar, where he placed 31st.
By the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in 2021, his talent was plain to see. The Slovenian finished fifth. It was at this point he was taken under the wing of Gerd Kanter, the Estonian great, who won 11 medals at Olympic, World, and European level, including gold at the Beijing 2008 Olympics.
“Last year was the first year fully (with Gerd),” says Ceh. “But 2021 in Olympic year, I was with another coach, and he was already helping me a little. He gave me some tips.”
And in 2022, Kantner’s input began to make the difference. Ceh won 18 of 20 competitions he took part in, only missing top spot at the Paavo Nurmi Games in Turku, Finland, and the European Championships in Munich, Germany, where he was third and second respectively.
In last year’s biggest event, the World Athletics Championships in Eugene, Oregon, USA, the Slovenian star was one of the most emphatic winners across the whole track and field programme, He was almost two metres clear of his nearest rivals with a thumping championship best performance of 71.13m.
“It was a really surprising year,” he says. “If someone had told me at the start of the year, I wouldn’t have believed them. When I started to work with Gerd, it changed my technique a little bit, (so I was) more stable and so I was very consistent at the end of the season.”
Ceh is an amiable character, who enjoys camaraderie with his nearest rivals. But it doesn’t lessen his desire to win and beat them.
“We talk a lot with the guys, also out of competition,” he says. “Of course, in competition, everyone is for themselves. I am focussed. We don’t talk very much in competition.”
Ceh's goals for 2023
With the World Championships taking place again this year in Budapest, Hungary, Ceh has the appetite for gold again.
“I hope to repeat last year. It’s going to be hard, but we are training really good. So, I don’t think it’s impossible. Training is going really well. Much better than last year at the same time. So, I really have high hopes for this season. I hope it’s going to be consistent at a high level.”
Ceh admits that he sometimes gets a little nostalgic for the simple life on the farm. “I am mostly in Estonia with Gerd training, so I am rarely at home.
“I really like to work there (at the dairy farm), sometimes I miss it. But training comes first - sport is not forever, so I can do this after sports.” And, for now at least, he is concentrating on being among the cream of world athletics.