Sheila T. Poised to Make Olympic History

Triathlon Forum
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It won’t be easy tomorrow, but she had a great semi today…

Sheila Taormina (Livonia, Mich./Colorado Springs, Colo.) put together an amazing performance in today’s semifinal action at the 2007 World Modern Pentathlon Championships in Berlin, Germany, finishing in first place of Group B with 4,224 total modern pentathlon points to qualify for Saturday’s final.

If she places in the top three in Saturday’s final, Taormina will make sports history by becoming the first woman to qualify for the Olympic Games in three different sports. She has already competed in the Olympic Games in the sports of swimming and triathlon. She won a gold medal in swimming at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Ga., swimming the third leg of the 800m freestyle relay. She finished sixth and 23rd , respectively, in the triathlon at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia and the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. Taormina’s top modern pentathlon World Cup performance came in March 2007 when she won the silver medal at World Cup #2 in Cairo, Egypt.

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Granted, she already has some pretty good tools and preparation, first from swimming and then tris, but is this just saying something about the level of competition in Modern Pentathlon when a newbie can jump into the sport and make the Olympic team?

I am sure that Lew Kidder will jump in and give us some better insight into her modern pentathlon competition.

Dev

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Same thing it says when she can also make the Olympic team as a triathlete less than three years after her first race.

The ranks of elite athletes won’t see another athlete with Sheila T.'s versatility for a long time. At this point, I half expect to see her show up at the 2010 winter games as a biathlete.