Pentathlete Sheila Taormina Takes on Third Olympic Sport
Sheila Taormina courtesy Sheila Taormina
She calls herself a multitasker, but in her Olympic career
Sheila Taormina has been more of a multiplier. On Friday morning in Beijing (Thursday night here in the States), the 39-year-old Livonia, Michigan, native will become the first woman to compete in three different sports at the Olympics.
Taromina won a swimming gold medal in 1996 as part of the United States' 4x 200-meter freestyle relay. In 2000 and 2004, she competed in the triathlon, one sport times three: swimming, biking and running. (She finished sixth in Sydney and 23rd four years later in Athens.) This go-round, it's
modern pentathlon with its five distinct skill sets: pistol shooting, fencing, swimming, equestrian show jumping and running. (NBCOlympics.com has live coverage starting Thursday night at 8:30 pm/ET. MSNBC has a recap Friday during the 5 am 5 pm/ET show.)
Modern pentathlon is based on a soldier delivering a message, but Taormina has a different mission: "I'm trying to break the paradigm that it takes 10 years to learn a sport." She had hardly glanced at a horse, much less ridden one, three years ago. She'd never fired a gun, either, or seen a fencing uniform.
She also wrestled her own demons, anxiety and depression as the event proved more difficult than expected. She even had to sell her house to finance her dream. "I would cry and cry," Taormina says. "It was tough to take when you win a gold medal in one sport and you win a world championship in another sport, and you're getting humiliated time and time again and you're going broke financially."
She persevered to attain a Top 10 world ranking earn a spot in the Olympic field. What's next? Heptathlon, track and field's seven-eventer? "I'm finished after this Olympics, hands down," says Taormina, who has an MBA from the University of Georgia and is a motivational speaker. "The fact [that] I've actually had such a rough time these three years, it will definitely make it easy to close the door to sports."
- Karen Rosen
UPDATE: Taormina had rough start but finished strong to place
19th overall. In the first event,
shooting, she only was 28th. That was followed by a 36th (and last) in
fencing, winning just four of her 35 bouts. She rallied after that, setting an Olympic pentathlon record in the
200-meter freestyle swim (2:08.86) and then pulled off a clean ride in the
equestrian show-jumping portion of the competition. She had the seventh best time over the concluding
3,000-meter run, but it just wasn't enough to catch the leaders.
Lena Schoneborn of Germany
won gold, with Heather Fell of Great Britain taking silver and Urkaine's Victoria Terschuk in bronze position.
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Edited by Rich Sands at 08/22/2008 12:47 PM
