Eight months before Joe Kovacs became a world champion again, he was at the center of a career intervention in a kitchen.
It was February 2019. Kovacs, the 2015 World champion and 2016 Olympic silver medalist in the shot put, had dipped down into a college-level meet and lost to a Chinese athlete that he coached.
Kovacs threw 19.52 meters, nearly 10 feet shy of his personal best. He failed to break 20 meters at a meet for the first time in four and a half years.
In the kitchen that evening, the two most important women in his life (and his career) voiced openings for him to consider retirement, according to Spikes.