Silver medallist shot putter: priests and religious 'helped me a ton'

A shot putter who won a silver medal in Rio is a member of the Knights of Columbus who counts priests and religious among his friends and role models.

Joe Kovacs, who was world champion in Beijing last year, was first trained in the sport by his mother, Joanna, a teacher, who also raised him on her own after the death of his father, Joseph, in 1997.

Kovacs told Columbia, the Knights of Columbus magazine, that he and his mother became close to a community of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart while he was growing up.