A decade later: Stacy Dragila

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http://trackfield.teamusa.org/news/2010 ... 3?ngb_id=3

A decade later: Stacy Dragila
Brandon Penny September 27, 2010


Photo: Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
When Dave Nielsen told his women’s heptathlete team he wanted them to try pole vault, they thought he was losing it.

Nielsen is head coach of track & field at Idaho State University (ISU) and a former All-American pole vaulter himself. But back in 1993, women did not pole vault.

One of the eight women on his team was Stacy Dragila, who was a good all-around athlete but as Nielsen described his first impression of her, “Nothing jumped off the page at me.”

“I told him, ‘Well, women don’t pole vault,’ and he goes, ‘Well who says so?’” Dragila said. “I was terrified at first, because I didn’t understand how to swing upside down and get my feet over my head, so that was kind of frightening.”

Nielsen had his athletes practice their pole vaulting at meets while athletes from other colleges were filing in. It was the perfect way to spark interest in the sport.

The next year, Nielsen scheduled a collegiate women’s pole vault competition and he and his ISU team became a springboard for women’s pole vault in the state and beyond.

“In the mean time, Stacy’s getting pretty good and one thing led to another and I was watching her and realized, ‘I think this girl’s got it,’” Nielsen said. “She winded up being a better pole vaulter than other events.”

For Dragila, messing around with pole vault started out as a way to appease her coach and try something different.

But in a short period of time, her pole vault career went further than she could have ever imagined.

In 1995, USA Track & Field (USATF) held the first national pole vault championship for women. Dragila finished second. Later that year, she received a call from USATF asking her to go to England and compete in a USA vs. Great Britain duel.

In 1996, pole vault was an exhibition event at the U.S. Olympic Trials. Dragila won. The next year, she met Australia’s Emma George, who would change the future of women’s pole vault.

George set 12 new world records from 1995 – 1999. It was because of her success that there was such a big push to make women’s pole vault a medal event at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

“In 1999, right before Seville World Championships, they had announced they were gonna make it a full-fledged medal event because of Emma George and their opportunity of getting the gold medal for their country,” Dragila said. “That’s how quickly it turned around.”

George had a bad fall a few weeks before the first-ever outdoor World Championships in Seville, Spain and Dragila ended up taking the title.

“After that, I still thought she’s gonna get back in the saddle, she’s going for gold at the Olympics,” Dragila recalled. “And I was good friends with her because we had come up through the ranks so quickly together.”

George’s injury was not public knowledge, so the thousands of fans who showed up at Stadium Australia for the women’s pole vault still expected her to win. Dragila knew the reality of the situation but still hoped her friend would recover in time.

“She was on the runway, people were cheering for her, you could just see it in her eye – fear to run down the runway,” Dragila said. “I was cheering her on, praying that she was gonna make this clearance because it was her third attempt and she ran down there and didn’t make it.

“I just started to cry and as she was walking back to the pit, I gave her a hug and she just grabbed me and she goes, ‘Don’t cry for me, you need to refocus cause this Games is yours,’” Dragila said.

On Sept. 29, 2000, the pole vault finals took place on a night when history was being made elsewhere on the track. Australian Aborigine Cathy Freeman won gold in the 400 meter race and American Michael Johnson won his second consecutive gold in the men’s 400m.

Dragila found herself easily distracted by the races that were going on and missed her first two attempts at 4.5m.

“I was on my third attempt and I don’t tend to like to jump on my third attempt, but I just took a deep breath and I remember Cathy was rounding the bend for the last 150 of her lap and all 110,000 people were going crazy,” Dragila said.

“I usually try to encourage people to clap for me, but everyone was already clapping and directing their attention to Cathy, so I said, ‘Alright, just start clapping and just think everyone is clapping for you.’”

It worked. Dragila made her third attempt and moved on to make the next two heights as well. At age 28, she ended the competition at a height of 4.6m and became the first women’s pole vault gold medalist in Olympic history.

In the end, it was George’s teammate, Tatiana Grigorieva, who Dragila beat out for silver. Iceland’s Vala Flosadottir took bronze.

“I remember it didn’t feel like it was about winning the medal right then and there,” Dragila said. “It felt like it was the journey we all had taken in getting there in such a short time and even a year ago we didn’t know for sure if it was gonna be a medal event. To be able to stand on that podium and earn that right of having that medal placed around you was a dream come true for sure.”

Following an Olympic Games, many gold medalists take time off from competing. Some retire, some rest, and some make changes in their lives. But after Sydney, Dragila continued to compete and remained No. 1 in the world, winning the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton, Alberta.

“I felt like I still hadn’t reached my potential, and so I think the Olympic medal spurred my interest of seeing what else I could do,” Dragila said. “I was healthy and, yeah, I was exhausted after the whirlwind experience, but my coach and I had the same vision of just getting out there and keep moving on what we had established that summer.”

Though she was one of the older athletes, she was reining national champion from 1999 – 2005. Four years after Sydney, Dragila made it to the Athens 2004 Olympic Games in search of another medal, but knew that would not be possible.

She had a rough transition switching coaches that year and was also faced with Achilles and calf problems, which resulted in her taking three weeks off before the Games. In Athens, she did not qualify for the finals.

“You just become more aware of your body as you get older,” Dragila said. “It’s just a learning experience and unfortunately that was one of those times that I just didn’t have a lot of people in my corner looking out for me.”

Dragila did not make the 2008 Olympic team, but that did not stop her from continuing to vault.

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Part 2 of the article here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20535

or full article here: http://trackfield.teamusa.org/news/2010 ... 3?ngb_id=3