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Dragila throws trial worries away
SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) -- Stacy Dragila, the women's world pole vault record holder, was nervous. Little things about her vaulting technique were causing big problems. "I feared I would no-height" at the U.S. Olympic trials in Sacramento, Dragila said Wednesday. "I feared that I am not going to the team [for the Sydney Olympics]." After all, Jeff Hartwig, the American record holder, had suffered that fate at these U.S. trials last week. So Dragila, who faces qualifying on Friday and the finals on Sunday, laid out her problems. Spread out on the floor in a dark room back home in Pocatello, Idaho, last week, she talked about those little things to the cross country coach at Idaho State University. Brian Jansen had helped other athletes visualize their problems, and Dragila was hoping he could assist her, too. "He said to recognize all of my fears and try to stomp them or throw them away," Dragila said. "I was stomping on them, just making them into nothing. Then he said, 'Toss them over your shoulders.' "I just ran up to him and made a big old ball, throwing them into the garbage can. It was such a stress reliever for me," the world champion said. "All those little things that had been bugging me at the last couple of meets, I just threw them away." The tension relieved, Dragila said she could now visualize "the perfect jump" and see herself "on the top of the podium [both here and in Sydney] and jumping 16 feet [4.88 meters]." She knows that Australian Emma George, the former world record holder, will be tough to beat with the Games in her home country. Yet Dragila, who recently raised the pole vault record to 15 feet, 1 3/4 inches (4.62 meters), believes she will have a new standard for George to shoot at before Sydney. "I think 16 feet [4.88 meters] could happen" at the U.S. trials, said Dragila. That would add to the sweetness of the women's pole vault, but the fact that it will be an Olympic medal event for the first time at Sydney in itself is something of a vindication for Dragila. A fellow junior college student once told this one-time goat roper that women could never vault, that they don't have the upper body strength to compete. "I took it to heart," said Dragila. But her college coach at Idaho State, Dave Nielsen, changed her mind several years later. Now she is the best, soaring to heights she would love for that naysayer from junior college to witness.
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