Sheila Taormina Faces the Perils of Pentathlon on the Road to Olympic History
The 2004 International Triathlon Union World Champion, three time World Cup winner and two-time triathlon Olympian (2000 and 2004) who retired from triathlon late in 2005 after a farewell silver medal at the very first Beijing World Cup did not fall off the edge of the sporting world after triathlon.
In fact, Sheila Taormina, also a member of the gold medal-winning 1996 U.S. 4x200 swim relay team, is on the verge of one of the rarest of athletic achievements – making the Olympics in a third sport.
With final Olympic selection up in the air until the current world championship in Hungary concludes in the first week of June, Taormina is on the bubble to make the U.S. modern pentathlon Olympic two-women team.
If she makes it, Taormina will have pulled off what some observers call a miracle. Starting in late 2005, she learned the demanding intricacies of fencing, show jumping and shooting from scratch to go with her stellar swim and run to reach Olympic medal contender status in the obscure sport invented by the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron de Coubertin.
Bill Mallon, co-founder of the International Society of Olympic Historians, told The Times of London: ”I would rate Taormina’s accomplishment, assuming it occurs, as truly remarkable in this era of sports specialization. Even though her sports are slightly related, there is not much overlap between triathlon and modern pentathlon. It will be a stunning achievement.”
In her very first modern pentathlon competition in late 2005, after only months of training, Taormina won the Pan Am championship in Argentina. In 2006, she was third in her first World Cup and in 2007, she scored a silver medal at the modern pentathlon World Cup in Cairo. Right now, she is the top ranked American and ninth in the world on the 2008 modern pentathlon world cup circuit.
Janusz Peciak, who won an Olympic gold medal in modern pentathlon for Poland in the 1976 Olympics and who serves as head coach of the United States modern pentathlon team, told USA Today: “This would be an unbelievable accomplishment.” Citing her already excellent swim and run, Peciak says Taormina is among 10 women with a chance to win a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics.
Taormina explained to USA Today just how great a task it was to master three new sports at an Olympic level in just three years. “I’m trying to break the paradigm that it takes a lifetime – or at least 10 years – to learn a sport,” she said. “I say, ‘Well, is that for a 10-year-old kid who has never done sports in his life and only trains four days a week for an hour a day? What if you’re an athlete who is going to train six days a week, five hours a day?'”
If she makes the team, which involves some nerve-wracking last-minute Olympic points qualification number crunching, Taormina will become the first U.S. athlete in modern history to make the Olympics in three sports.
Olympic historians have been poring over the records and have found only eight U.S. two-sport Olympians. Three women all did speed skating and cycling - Connie Carpenter-Phinney, Connie Paraskevin-Young and Chris Witty. Men include Willie Davenport (track and bobsled), Edward Egan (boxing and bobsled), David Gilman (canoeing and luge) Arthur Longsjo (cycling and speed skating) and Arnold Uhrlass (speed skating and cycling).
According to The Times of London, the last athlete to compete in the Olympics in three separate sports did so in 1928 – and no woman has ever done it.
When the net is widened to include world-class athletes in two or more major sports, and not simply making an Olympic team, the going gets really select. This short list includes:
Jim Thorpe, Olympic decathlon champion, Hall of Fame pro football player and professional baseball player
Babe Didrickson-Zaharias, multiple Olympic medalist and Hall of Fame pro golfer
Hale Irwin, all-American safety for the University of Colorado football team and three-time U.S. Open golf champion
Bo Jackson, All-Pro NFL player and All-Star Major League Baseball player
Deion Sanders, All-Pro NFL safety and pro baseball player.
Most certainly, Taormina belongs in that group, since she has Olympic gold in swimming and an elite world championship in triathlon. Michael Jordan doesn’t get in this club, since his baseball skills were only minor league and his golf game rates as amateur hacker. And, if Taormina cashes in a medal in her role as one of the Olympic favorites in modern pentathlon, she will arguably surpass them all.
But athletic achievement has never come easy for Taormina, who approaches athletic quests with the tenacity of Sisyphus, overcoming the Perils of Pauline with the patience of Job. She failed in her first two Olympic tries in swimming, only to eke out a spot on the women’s 4x200-meter freestyle relay by less than one-tenth of a second on her third try at the U.S. Olympic Trials in 1996. Taormina and the rest of her squad in Atlanta then converted that one shot at glory with a gold medal.
Starting triathlon on a lark to get back in shape in 1998, Taormina swiftly moved through the ranks under the guidance of coach Lew Kidder. In her first World Cup, she accidentally picked out the wrong bike and shoes then returned to exchange it for her equipment, then crashed heavily - twice.
With just one chance left to make the 2000 Olympic squad, Taormina scored a clutch win at the Dallas U.S. Olympic Trials, then scored a sixth at the Olympics. Overcoming multiple injuries and illnesses and the frightening tension exacted by a stalker who was eventually prosecuted and imprisoned after years of harassment and threats, Taormina scored a second clutch Olympic qualifying performance when she won the 2004 ITU world championship in Portugal.
But nothing has been as tough as modern pentathlon. In her first year, Taormina fearlessly took on 1,200-pound horses jumping four-foot barriers at speeds up to 20 mph. When she fell, several times, the impact was greater than any bike crash she’s ever had. While fencing that first year, the blade of one training partner slipped between segments of her protective padding and left her with a brutal multicolored bruise. At times, she would get so frustrated with losing fencing matches, she would yell at her coaches and ask them, “What am I doing here?”
But even harder than the toll on her body was the stress. In order to learn the intricacies of her new sports, Taormina shelled out between $50,000 and $60,000 per year for lessons alone and sold her house in Florida to cover the costs. On the way, Taormina has an average of 23 workouts in five sports per week. And, believing that her unprecedented quest to make the grade in a third Olympic sport would be a natural to attract new sponsors, Taormina found loyal existing sponsors like Amino Vital and Speedo continued to pitch in but the rest were waiting until she made the team.
Which leads Sheila Taormina to this weekend.
If you thought the rules for Olympic qualification in triathlon were complex, modern pentathlon’s thicket of standards make the ITU’s Olympic qualification rulebook look like checkers.
Roughly speaking, the quest to become eligible for Olympic team nomination is a two-step process. If anyone scored a podium at the 2007 Pan American Games, the 2007 world championship or 2008 Worlds, or is one of top seven women on the Olympic qualifying points list not included in the three championship podiums, their country can nominate them after the world championship in Hungary this weekend.
To clear up some of the natural confusion, declaring someone eligible for the Olympic team - nomination – is not theoretically tantamount to making the team. After the first round of Olympic qualifying nominations are made June 1, a second round of at large nominations are scheduled to be made June 15.
At that point, the national governing bodies are theoretically free to take all qualified athletes into consideration and choose the two strongest team athletes for the Olympic team.
Or maybe not.
So far, Mickey Kelley is the only American woman to make the first cut, scoring a third at the 2007 Pan Am Games. But most observers think Kelly, who currently ranks 29th in World Cup standings, is far behind both Taormina and 16-year-old phenomenon Margaux Isaksen of Fayetteville, Arkansas, who rank ninth and 10th respectively in 2008 World Cup points.
Perfectly illustrating the volatile and tricky nature of modern pentathlon, horse riders with lesser experience can be completely stumped by a balky horse and fall out of contention. This happened to Taormina and Isaksen at the Pan Am Games. This was not a badge of shame, since Taormina scored a perfect 1,200 points in the equestrian competition at the notoriously difficult World Cup in Great Britain this year.
Since no American woman scored a podium at last year’s Worlds, the final path to June 1 first round Olympic nomination is this year’s world championship in Hungary. According to Taormina’s long time coach Lew Kidder, Taormina is mentally and physically “fried” after the five-event World Cup rounds and will pass up the world championship. Isaksen, on the other hand, is still fresh and is coming off a second place at the Mexico World Cup earlier this year. While other veterans are favored, Isaksen has a longshot chance of making the podium. If so, she would also get a first round nomination.
Underlining the difficulty in pinpointing U.S. modern pentathlon Olympic qualification rules, Kidder, a former practicing lawyer, says he is not absolutely sure what will come next. While Taormina is the highest ranked U.S. female modern pentathlete in the world, a major difference in rules interpretation could leave her off the team when the final squad is nominated in early June.
The way Kidder and Taormina see it, Kelley, Taormina and Isaksen will earn performance-based Olympic qualification. Because the U.S. can only take two modern pentathletes to the Olympics, selection will come down to a tie-breaker – the best three results from the five events in the 2008 modern pentathlon World Cup series. In those standings, Taormina is ninth, Isaksen 10th and Kelley is 29th.
Taormina told The Washington Post’s Amy Shipley that she and Isaksen “have earned it. Bottom line. No question. Case closed.”
However, Kidder said he’d heard that the USOC would automatically select the first round nominee(s) for the Olympic team. If Isaksen made the podium at Worlds, that would sew up the two Olympic spots and Taormina’s quest would be dashed. If Isaksen were to miss the podium, then the tie breaker would come down to a contest between Isaksen and Taormina and they believe Taormina would automatically win the spot by virtue of her close lead in World Cup series points.
Fearing that apparent rules ambiguity might lead the US modern pentathlon organization to rule against her, Taormina has had Kidder consult with Chicago-based attorney John Collins for advice in handling any potential appeal.
“I have played honestly and ethically and put my head down and done the work,” Taormina told the Washington Post.. “That’s what’s driving me mad. I have never faced this before in sports.”
Meanwhile, the best story line would include Taormina and Isaksen, - the oldest and youngest contenders. Ironically or not, they often room together on the road at international events.
As Taormina told Vicky Michaelis of USA Today, they are the Odd Couple of modern pentathlon: “I feel guilty when I’m around her because I’m tired and old and cranky and she’s all bright and bubbly. We’re roommates at all these world cups. We draw a line because I’m very neat and she’s a typical 16-year-old where the room exploded out of her bag.”
Isaksen told USA Today that Taormina is “almost like my mom away from home.”
On June 1, Taormina will find out if her latest dream will come true.
