For most athletes, a 19.91m throw when your opponent sets a meet record wouldn’t be the worst result in the world. But that’s not what Chase Jackson expects from herself. Not as a 10-time US champion who knows well what her best looks like. Because right now, the gap between training and competition is eating her alive.

A silver medal at Stockholm should feel like a victory. For a champion of her calibre, it feels like anything but. Jackson is not really sure what is keeping her from putting her best foot forward in competitions, especially after throwing a season-best result four days before the Stockholm DL meet.

“I’m pretty upset and really disappointed to be honest, I’ve been throwing much further in training all year, really, but it’s just not clicking right for me at the moment for one reason or another,” Jackson said after the meet.

“The body isn’t responding well at all to the different time zones; it’s killing me right now. I threw a season’s best in Turku the other day, and now, I’ll refocus on Oslo next week. I really hope I can hit it right over there, I need to.”

What makes her performance in Stockholm even more shocking is that she failed to come even close to the 20m mark. Her 19.91m was the closest of her three legal throws, while her other three throws were all invalid attempts. It marks her second consecutive loss in both the DL and to Dutch shot-putter Jessica Schilder.

To make things even worse, Jackson’s performance in Stockholm almost replicated her performance in the Shanghai DL. There, she started with a 19.97 throw but failed to cross the 20m mark until her fifth, when she hit 20.46. That happened to be her season best throw at the time and her best throw since she hit 20.90 at the Bruxelles DL meet in August 2025.

It’s a long time for a shot-putter to be that off their game. However, the moment she stepped out of the DL, the Olympian did well. That took place at the Paavo Nurmi Games in Turku, where Chase Jackson beat Jessica Schilder in a rather impressive performance. She opened with 20.19m (well beyond her DL performances), and that basically set the tone for the remainder of the contest.

By the third round, Jackson had hit 20.66m to break her season best, while the Dutch athlete struggled, throwing a best of 20.18m. What makes things rather interesting is the fact that the American managed that four days before the Stockholm DL. It does mean that Jackson may need to figure out what is going wrong this season.

After all, it’s the year that Jackson finally broke her World Indoor Championships gold medal duck; she will be hoping to add to that.