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Suttle lands on team despite broken pole
By Vahe Gregorian
Of the Post-Dispatch
07/18/2004
Kellie Suttle competes in the women's Pole Vault Final during the U.S. Olympic Team Track & Field Trials Sunday in Sacramento, Calif.
(Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Groans and gasps rumbled through the stands as Kellie Suttle's pole splintered and scattered in three pieces in the finals of the U.S. Olympic track and field trials Sunday.
"That was scary," said Suttle's twin sister, Shellie, one of the onlookers.
But Suttle landed in the pit gently enough to avoid injury and, in fact, grateful that the pole didn't explode in her hand, which it easily could have done. She also landed with her psyche intact - more or less.
"I had no choice. In the middle of the Olympic trials, what are you going to do?" said Suttle, a Francis Howell graduate. "You either suck it up, or you go home."
Two jumps after the near-disaster at 14 feet 3 inches, Suttle cleared the bar again and finished third with a jump of 14-11 to secure her second successive Olympic berth.
When she left the track, she was nearly trembling with joy.
"Oh, dude, I was overwhelmed," she said later. "Most people, that would end a competition for."
In the first few moments off the track, she cried at the mention of everything from the news that her sister is pregnant to a recent slump.
"This was the most amazing thing that could happen to me," Suttle said.
Her resilience was appreciated all over the track, from winner Stacey Dragila, who said "anybody else but Kellie" would have been too shaken to get it back together, to second-place Jillian Schwartz, who called Suttle's response "awesome."
It resonated with her boyfriend, Toby Stevenson, who made the men's pole vault team last week and said "you can't coach that" while noting that he was glad he'd have a date at the Athens Olympics now. And it moved onlookers such as University of Missouri coach Rick McGuire, who was nearby when the pole broke and watched Suttle carefully afterward.
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that vaulters are off the scale on risk-taking, but I don't believe that anybody does that and doesn't have this momentary shock go through their body," said McGuire, who watched Suttle's demeanor and knew she wouldn't let her story become one of "if not for the pole breaking ..."
Suttle had been in pole vaulting for 10 years before she broke a pole two months ago.
"Was that as good as the one in Phoenix?" she joked with Stevenson as she walked to drug testing later.
Although she said she jumped successfully in Phoenix afterward, she knew she benefited from having it happen before.
Her sister even called the previous break a blessing in disguise.
"I wasn't as shocked," said Suttle, who said her hand has been bothering her since Phoenix but that she had no intention of getting an X-ray of it. "I don't know (if anything's broken). I don't want to know."
Now that Suttle has made the team, she will take aim at Dragila, the American record-holder, and world-record holder Svetlana Feofanova of Russia. Feofanova is the only woman to have cleared 16 feet. Dragila's American record is 15-10.
Asked if she can beat Dragila, who won by eight inches Sunday, Suttle said, "She's definitely beatable, because (Schwartz and I have) beaten her at different times. She's human."
On Sunday, she clearly was victorious, anyway.
"I should win just for breaking the pole," she said, laughing.
Reporter Vahe Gregorian
E-mail:
vgregorian@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8199
