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The Men's Hammer Throw has been included in every Summer Olympic Games, excluding the inaugural tournament in 1896. Since this time, athletes representing the United States have won the most medals, with seven golds and 19 total medals, while Soviet athletes were close behind with seven golds and 18 total medals. Since the Soviet Union's dissolution, medals have been won in the Men's Hammer Throw by athletes from a reasonably wide variety of nations; 2016 champion, Dilshod Nazarov, made history for Tajikistan when he won the country's first gold medal. Two athletes have been stripped of medals in the Men's Hammer Throw, both of which occurred in the 2004 games in Athens. These included the gold medallist, Adrián Annus of Hungary, and bronze medallist Ivan Tsikhan of Belarus (who did, however, go on to win silver and bronze medals in the 2008 and 2016 games).

The Irish connection

The event's most decorated athlete is John Flanagan, who won three consecutive golds between 1900 and 1908. Despite being born and spending most of his life in Ireland, Flanagan lived in New York from 1896 to 1911 and chose to represent the U.S. at the Olympics, rather than represent Britain (of which Ireland was a part of at the time). Upon returning to Ireland, Flanagan coached the hammer throw, with one of his students being future gold winner Pat O'Callaghan. O'Callaghan is just one of two other athletes to win multiple golds in this event (the other being Yuriy Sedykh of the USSR), and his victory in 1928 marked the first occasion where an Irish athlete won an Olympic gold medal while representing Ireland and not Britain.