Lakeville Father Beats Own Shot Put World Record In Para Pan American Games

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- What's even better than winning a gold medal? How about setting a new world record.

That's exactly what a Lakeville man did last Sunday. Josh Cinnamo would tell you that doing well in competition is one thing, but where the real work is done is during practice -- especially when the father of two doesn't exactly have the luxury of solely being an athlete.

"Kids in the morning and work, coming home and making sure that they're taken care of, and then getting into a weight room, getting into a ring to throw -- and then having a normal life as a family and trying to make it work all at the same time," Cinnamo said. "So, yeah, it's pretty difficult. But if you want something bad enough, the process finds it way."

The process found its way to Peru last week for the Para Pan American Games. Josh was born with only part of his right arm. His left arm was already the reigning world record holder in the shot put.

But last Sunday, he put what he'd done in practice into performance and broke his own world record.

"My practices this summer were very good," he said. "I'd been throwing in that range for a while, but to put it into a meet --and have it count and get written down on a piece of paper and on the scoreboard and all those kinds of things -- yeah, I mean it's always a surprise when that kind of thing happens because no one else has done it before.

"In these major championships, there's a world record mark out there," Cinnamo continued. "I couldn't see it because the grass was long. I knew it was long, and it felt really good.

"As soon as it popped up on the board, I turned around to my coach and my teammate and we just let out this huge yell. And at the same time, the 400 meters was getting ready to go off," he said with a laugh. "And so we started yelling, and then we false started the 400 meters. Which was kind of a cool thing, as a field event athlete, because the track gets all the attention, so the fact that we got to false start the 400 was kind of nice."

Just back from Peru, he's already thinking about what's next. Another world championship competition in November leads up to next summer when he'll try for Paralympic gold.