Colorado Springs – Sometimes Sheila Taormina wrestles with what she calls “the tyranny of the shoulds.”
She’s 37 years old, so she should be married, have children and live in a house with her name on the mortgage.
Sometimes she wonders if trying to make her fourth Olympics, in her third sport, in a decidedly obscure discipline, is worth the financial sacrifices she must make. It’s hard enough getting through the day training for an esoteric sport with five disciplines without stressing out about money.
Taormina won a gold medal in swimming at the Atlanta Olympics, competed in the first Olympic triathlon in Sydney and competed in triathlon again in Athens. Now she hopes to make the Beijing Olympic team in modern pentathlon – pistol shooting, fencing, swimming, horseback riding and running.
She had never ridden a horse, fired a gun or wielded an épée sword before deciding to give pentathlon a shot 18 months ago. But because of her ability in swimming and running, she has a chance to be good, maybe even challenge for a medal.
“Her swimming is unbelievable. She’s the fastest swimmer in pentathlon in the world,” said U.S. pentathlon coach Janusz Peciak, who won a gold medal for Poland at the 1976 Olympics. “She’s a top three, top four runner. She has a huge advantage in the run and the swim. There’s about 10 girls in the world with a chance to win a gold medal. Sheila is very close to this top 10 now.”
It hasn’t been easy. Taormina has mere months to learn highly technical disciplines competitors have spent years mastering. Learning them means having multiple coaches, which can be expensive. She moved from Florida to Colorado Springs in June to take advantage of the Olympic Training Center and its access to free coaching, facilities and meals.
“The last year has been probably the most trying year of my life, questioning if what I’m doing is really the right thing according to the gifts I’ve been given,” said Taormina, who is competing this week at the World Cup Finals in Rome. “Even though I’ve been extremely depressed and (had) high anxiety, and financially in a total panic, the underlying feeling I had was thankfulness to God for the opportunity I know is there and the potential that could be there in a couple of years.”
Taormina says riding a 1,200-pound horse over 4-foot barriers is the most exhilarating thing she’s done in sports, never mind the five or six falls she had in June, but she is far from mastering the basics of riding. There isn’t enough time.
“Most women who start riding at 30 years old, it’s a year or two before they’re even jumping a vertical, 2-foot (barrier),” said Taormina’s equestrian coach, Tracey Powers. “They’re working on basics, basics, basics – just learning how to steer and control your pace. She’s doing very well.”
Peciak says it takes five or six years to develop a good fencer, so the goal is to make Taormina average. If they can accomplish that by Beijing, she can be competitive because her swimming and running are so strong.
“Fencing is more difficult to teach than riding or shooting, it’s more complicated in the technical aspects,” Peciak said. “I know if she had five or six years of fencing, she would be a very good fencer, but we have to speed up.”
Taormina says fencing has been the hardest of her three new sports to pick up, and it’s not just the technique. Her triathlon sports taught her to get in a rhythm, a tempo of breathing and repetitive motions. In fencing, getting into a rhythm makes her predictable to her opponent.
As a swimmer and triathlete, her strength was her willingness to tolerate more pain than her opponents, but fencing is a “physical chess match” and shooting is all about relaxation. Peciak says Taormina is fun to be around – until she gets impatient about the learning process.
“I know it’s not rocket science,” Taormina said of fencing. “I would get so mad at myself, ‘Why am I even doing this?’ I’m not just taking it up for fun. It’s wonderful and beautiful when people say, ‘I want to try a triathlon and my goal is to finish it,’ but I’m taking up this sport and saying, ‘My goal is to make the Olympic team – and to try to get a medal.’ The stress level of getting to master it as best I can is extremely tension-filled.”
Despite the obscurity of her sport, or maybe because of it, Taormina’s passion for the Olympics has been replenished. Triathlon had become a job, because there was decent money in it. There’s no money in pentathlon, but she’s excited about the Olympics again.
“In ’96 I was wide-eyed, I had my video camera with me wherever I went, I was like, ‘I can’t believe I’m here,”‘ Taormina said. “Once you’ve been to a couple, you say ‘OK, you’ve got to try to do well and focus.’
“I really want to go, I really want the Olympic dream. I’m trying to win, but for that mystical reason, more than the job-related reason. That’s kind of neat.”
How she fared
Sheila Taormina’s record in the Olympics:
ATLANTA 1996
Swimming, gold medal, 800-meter freestyle relay (set Olympic record with Trina Jackson, Christina Teuscher and Jenny Thompson).
SYDNEY 2000
Triathlon, sixth place.
ATHENS 2004
Triathlon, 23rd place.
