Dylan Armstrong is the Ethan Katzberg whisperer, a hulking corner man whose 6-foot-6 world champion speaks softly but carries a big hammer.

When it comes to media guidance, coach Armstrong implores the reigning men’s hammer throw Olympic champion to talk not of numbers when reporters ask about marks such as world records.

They prefer to (cue sports bromide) focus on the process and avoid attention-attracting prognostication, instead offering answers that are both true and trite, banalities often heard in post-game interviews.

The strategy has worked and it jives with Katzberg’s humble disposition, but make no mistake about this: They’re chasing the biggest number of them all — the world record of 86.74 metres.

I’m betting 22-year-old Katzberg — the Canadian Press male athlete of the year for 2024 — gets it done and what elevates the fascinating pursuit is lineage that stretches from the hammer and sickle to the Tournament Capital.

Yuriy Sedykh unleashed the 86.74m Herculean heave for the Soviet Union at the 1986 European Championships in Germany while under the tutelage of coach Dr. Anatoliy Bondarchuk, who won Olympic gold in hammer throw in 1972.

Bondarchuk developed a world-renowned periodization training system, the one he brought to Kamloops and used to push Armstrong to the Olympic podium in shot put in 2008 — the regime Armstrong mastered and now employs to drive Katzberg, who is hunting Sedykh’s record.

How can you not talk about that?

The man with the Viking visage expertly dodged my most recent attempt to broach the topic of becoming the greatest of all-time and I’m OK with that because it leaves room for speculation.

Before a prediction, an aside.

The feeling of Katzberg kinship in our city is not ubiquitous, with a segment of the River City population pointing to his Harbour City origins — he’s from Nanaimo so we don’t really care, they say.

This is an international star who would not be an Olympic gold medallist without City of Kamloops and Kamloops Track and Field Club facilities and staff, PacificSport Interior B.C. support, and coach Armstrong, a born-and-bred Kamloopsian whose dedication has helped Katzberg improve a colossal 30 metres since the moustached sensation moved here in 2020.

Fit him with a crown of sagebrush and ponderosa pine needles, etch his likeness onto the face of Mt. Paul, and spell his name in pulp-mill plume — a smoke signal of acceptance.

Perhaps it will take Katzberg improving his personal-best mark (84.38m) by 2.37m for some in this city to adopt him as one of our own.

The hot take? They’ll soon have a new son.

Katzberg will eclipse Sedykh this year in the Land of the Rising Sun, snaring the world record at the World Athletics Championships in September in Tokyo, Japan.

That’ll get ‘em talking.