New Zealand men’s discus record holder Connor Bell has retired from the sport.<\/p>\n
Bell is an Olympian, a two-time world championships finalist and 14-time national senior and age-group champion.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old holds the New Zealand discus record at 69.51 metres. That mark came at a meeting in Ramona, Oklahoma, in April last year and at the time took him into the top 50 all-time for throws.<\/p>\n
Bell has told supporters his decision comes amid a shift towards community work and mentorship, involving public speaking and school visits.<\/p>\n
“I’ve decided to step away from high-performance athletic competition and end my career as a discus thrower. This decision is the result of deliberate and sustained reflection over the past six months,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I am incredibly proud of my journey in athletics and the people I have met along the way, and the sport remains a significant piece of my identity. However, I now view it as a powerful platform for storytelling, education, and mentorship rather than the central focus of my career.”<\/p>\n
Bell won the gold medal at the Oceania championships in Queensland in 2022 and a month later finished eighth in the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham with a best throw of 60.23 metres.<\/p>\n
He had narrowly missed out on competing at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, but three years later he got Olympian status in Paris, where he finished 13th with a best throw of 62.88m.<\/p>\n
He also finished 10th at both the 2023 world championships in Budapest and the 2025 worlds in Tokyo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand men’s discus record holder Connor Bell has retired from the sport. Bell is an Olympian, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-523559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}