Stacy Dragila retires

[rainbowgirl28]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090909/ap_ ... MEc2VjA3Ny

Pole vaulter Stacy Dragila retires

By SAMUEL PETREQUIN, AP Sports Writer – 47 mins ago
PARIS – Former World and Olympic champion Stacy Dragila has ended her 14-year pole vaulting career with a second-place finish at the DecaNation track and field meet.
The 38-year-old American won gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the first games in which women competed in the pole vault. She is a two-time world champion.
Dragila told The Associated Press on Wednesday, "It was great to be a pioneer in this sport."
After two seasons plagued by injury, Dragila returned to competition in 2008 but failed to make the U.S. Olympic team for the Beijing Games. At last month's world championships in Berlin, she didn't qualify for the pole vault final.

[rainbowgirl28]

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/0909 ... _retires_1

Pole vaulter Stacy Dragila retires following second-place finish in France

By Samuel Petrequin, The Associated Press


PARIS - Former world and Olympic champion Stacy Dragila ended her 14-year pole vaulting career with a second-place finish at the DecaNation athletics meet on Wednesday.

The 38-year-old American won gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the first Games in which women competed in the pole vault, and is a two-time world champion.

"It was great to be a pioneer in this sport," Dragila told The Associated Press.

She cleared 4.45 metres but missed three attempts at 4.55 to finish behind Russian Tatiana Polnova, who cleared 4.55.

"I was able to win a gold medal in Sydney when I never thought it would be possible for a woman to win an Olympic gold medal in the women's pole vault," Dragila said. "To be the first one to win the gold medal is something very special, and something that will ever be in the records book."

After two seasons plagued by injury, Dragila returned to the international athletics in 2008 but failed to make the American Olympic team for the Beijing Games. At last month's world championships in Berlin, she didn't qualify for the pole vault final.

"I'm healthy and there are new chapters in my life, so I'm looking forward to that," Dragila said. "I had a great career, I made a lot of friends on the circuit, I had great head-to-head competitions. Those things, I will remember for the rest of my life."

[old vaulter]

An absolute legend....I am proud to have met Stacy and be able to hang out with her at the training center here in san diego during vault competitions....I still have her wheaties box somewhere in storage at home. Here's hoping to healthy babies and a great future together with Ian....the only debate will be...are the kids discus throwers or vaulters...best of luck and congratulations on all you accomplished in your career

Mike

[VaultPurple]

Decathletes.... They already have two of the hardest events to master on their side!

[rainbowgirl28]

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2531 ... la-retires

Women's Pole Vault Pioneer, Stacy Dragila Retires
by Rojo Grande Analyst

In 1994, as a junior in college, pole vaulter Stacy Dragila casually cleared a height of 10 feet. She was stunned to learn her clearance was a new American record.

In 2004, at the peak of her incredible career, Dragila set an indoor record of 15 feet, 9 2/5 inches at the World Indoor Championships.

It was possibly one of the most short-lived world records in history, as Stacy's young Russian rival, Yelena Isinbayeva, elevated the record by two inches only moments later.

The torch had been passed.

In that 10-year span, Dragila and her sport rose together from their awkward, insignificant beginnings to heights of world prominence and respect.

It was once thought that women lacked the upper body strength required to successfully compete in the pole vault.

Because of pioneers in the sport such as Stacy Dragila, "chicks with sticks" is now one of the most-watched and anticipated events in all of track and field.

And its not just the skimpy uniforms and fashion-model looks.

These ladies demonstrate the cutting edge of technique, strength and execution.

It was on Stacy Dragila's watch that women's vaulting transitioned from circus sideshow act to legitimate Olympic-caliber event. At the turn of the last century, the IOC could no longer deny the sport's widespread appeal and was forced to include it in the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics.

There, Dragila rightfully stepped in to claim the first Olympic gold medal ever awarded in women's vault. She went on to win two World Championships in 2001 and 2003. She set numerous world records in her long and successful tenure.

In recent years, age (she's now 38) and injury slowed the feisty competitor. This week, after 14 years in the sport, and overseeing the success of the latest torch-bearer, Dragila graciously ended her career.

Thank you Stacy, for giving us another reason to be a fan of track and field!

[rainbowgirl28]

http://www.iaaf.org/news/kind=100/newsid=54496.html

Pole Vault Pioneer Stacy Dragila takes a bow

There might have been a murmur around the stadium in Berlin on Saturday, 15 August, the first day of competition, when Stacy Dragila, after an easy first-attempt clearance at 4.25m, made a third miss at 4.40m to end the qualifying round of the women's pole vault tied for ninth in Group A.

It was just one missed attempt amid a tumultuous competition, but it showed both how young the women's pole vault really is, and how far it's come since a young heptathlete and rodeo goat-roper from the ranches of northern California first picked up a vaulting pole. "This wasn't the way I envisioned myself going out," Dragila said.

Keeping up with the boys

Unlike many female vaulters, who come to athletics through gymnastics, Dragila's introduction to sports came from a desire to keep up with her rough-and-tumble older brother, who competed in local rodeos. Rodeo sports like breakaway roping (where a mounted competitor chases down and lassos a running calf) and goat tying (where a mounted competitor has to approach a tethered goat, dismount, and immobilize the goat) were open to girls, and rewarded the strong, the quick, and the fearless.

Dragila used the strength she built in the rodeo ring as an intermediate hurdler in school, but it wasn't until she reached Idaho State University in Pocatello as heptathlete competing for points in the conference championships that a coach, Dave Nielsen, gave her the opportunity to try the newly-available event of pole vaulting.

Just as it had been growing up with her brother, Dragila's early career was all about proving that girls could do just as well as boys could. She was unimpressed with her own vaulting when she cleared 3.05m in 1994, and didn't learn until weeks later, in the pages of Track and Field News, that the mark represented a National Record.

A career of firsts

It turned out not to be her own success which motivated Dragila to continue vaulting after graduating from ISU in 1995, but the suggestion that women's vaulting still had something to prove. Motivated in college by teammates who said women were too weak to vault, Dragila fired her early professional career on comments from coaches who suggested women "couldn't vault high."

"I've heard coaches say that we couldn't jump 14 feet [4.27 m]," Dragila told Time magazine in 2000. "But we've surpassed that and gone way beyond. Now that we're jumping over 15 feet [4.57 m], a lot of those coaches have kind of quieted down and stepped aside, and said, 'Go for it and let's just see where you're going to go.'"

Dragila's approach wasn't entirely about jumping high, though she pushed the U.S. NR up to 4.83m by 2004 and set World Records indoors and out on over a dozen occasions. Dragila was also a master of championship competition, and made her biggest mark by winning all three global championships on the first occasions they included the women's pole vault.

The first of these singular distinctions came in 1997, when Dragila arrived in Paris to capture the first World Indoor title with a World Record 4.40m vault. Two years later, she arrived in Seville for the first-ever World Championships women's pole vault, and won that as well, her 4.60m winning vault there also representing a WR. In Sydney the next year for the first Olympic women's pole vault, Dragila again cleared 4.60m for the win, making her the first Olympic champion in the women's vault.

Dragila defended her World Championship title in Edmonton in 2001, this time reaching a winning height of 4.75m, and when she returned to Paris for the 9th World Championships (Paris 2003) she was the only woman who had ever held an outdoor global title in the pole vault in the four years such titles had existed.

The prominence this gave her came with a platform for her message: that women's vaulting was just as exciting and interesting as the men's, even if the bar was set a meter lower. In advance of the Sydney Olympics, for example, an American credit card company featured Dragila in a major advertising campaign, showing her vaulting to the accompaniment of a singer declaring, "I enjoy being a girl."

2003, of course, saw the world record going to a young Russian woman named Isinbayeva for the first time, and over the course of the next few years, Isinbayeva established near-total dominance over the pole vault, advancing the World Record to 5.06m. Dragila returned to form only to face a new American vaulter, Jen Stuczynski, bettering her national records. Dragila, ever the competitor, found herself in the role of challenger, pushing Stuczynski to new heights in indoor and outdoor competition.

"When I came on the world scene," she explained after her competition in Berlin, "I encouraged my competitors to push me. Once they would jump better, then I would jump better. I never really wanted to be up there by myself. I hope that's part of what I'm leaving behind."

But now, after fourteen years in a career which didn't exist when she started, Dragila is ready to declare victory and call it quits. Unlike her records, her legacy won't be easily erased; like Joan Benoit Samuelson, the first Olympic women's marathon champion, Dragila occupies a singular place in the history of the sport.

She also occupies a singular place in Pocatello, Idaho. The road to Idaho State University's Holt Arena, home of the ISU indoor track team and site of three of Dragila's World Record setting or equalling performances, is named Stacy Dragila Way.

Parker Morse for the IAAF