After Olympic gold, Olympic-goaled (Tim Mack Article)

[rainbowgirl28]

http://www.cleveland.com/sports/plainde ... xml&coll=2

After Olympic gold, Olympic-goaled
Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Bill Livingston
Plain Dealer Columnist


If an Olympic gold medal gives athletes the chance to write their own tickets, then Timothy Steven Mack should have been at the head of the freeloaders line.

If ever anyone should have cashed in, it was Mack, the Westlake native and St. Ignatius High School graduate, after winning the pole vault gold medal with an Olympic-record jump in Athens.

Mack was much closer to the old Olympic ideal of amateurism than the NBA millionaires, among them LeBron James, who lived on a luxury cruise ship in Greece and were lucky to win the bronze medal. Mack scraped by for years with a series of low-paying jobs. He drove a beat-up, hill-challenged clunker that a kindhearted coach sold him cheap.

Gold medalists in gymnastics and figure skating retire to the milk and honey of pro exhibitions. Track and field is not the high-profile sport it once was in America, but Mack never tried for a life of ease and expert analysis on TV.

He got $25,000 from the U.S. Olympic Committee for his gold. His sponsors, Nike and UCS Spirit poles, made nice to him. As for the rubber-chicken circuit, forget it.

Mack is healthy going into the season's first meet, the Pole Vault Summit in Reno, Nev., this weekend. A calf injury sidelined him for the indoor season in 2005 and wrecked his training.

It is, he agreed, 2001 all over again, when he embarked on a strict, tightly focused three-year plan that peaked in Greece with his third-attempt clearance of 19 feet, 6¼ inches. Mastering most sports takes hard work and dedication. What is hitting extra balls at the practice range or shooting off-season jump shots, compared to three years of sacrifice and self-denial?

Mack has stopped coaching high school vaulters in Knoxville, Tenn., where he lives, although he has had four state champions. He also did not coach in the Olympic year of 2004.

"I am not going to run around, making appearances," Mack said. "You have to be a little bit selfish. It's always more time and energy than you thought it would be. People can say, 'Why are you such a jerk?' I have plenty of time to do it after I'm done."

He always wanted, not just the results, but the inside knowledge of his event, the most technically demanding one in track and field. It is why he was not fooled by a big 19-2¼ jump last spring. "I had a big tailwind and just happened to do it right," he said.

"The worst thing about knowing so much about the event is knowing so much about the event," Mack added. "I knew my starting point on the runway was closer to the pit than it should be, because I wasn't covering as much ground last year, meaning I was slower. I was on a softer pole because I couldn't generate the force to get on a stiffer one. It was like going into a gunfight with a knife."

He will be almost 36 by the time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Sergey Bubka, the greatest pole vaulter ever, competed in Sydney at 36 in 2000 but didn't qualify for the final. Said Mack, "Bubka was jumping 19 feet when he was 19. He had 17 years of beating his body up. I was jumping 16 feet at 19. I've only had five years of jumping 19."

Mack uses indoor season to build for the outdoor meets. He does not expect big air under the roofs. "People don't realize how much time and energy it takes to jump 19 feet. Every piece of the puzzle is critical," Mack said.

As the Olympic motto says, in part: altius. Higher.

To reach this Plain Dealer columnist:

blivingston@plaind.com, 216-999-5754