Age no hurdle for this 84-year-old athlete
BURLINGTON, Vt. — An 84-year-old pole vaulter isn’t putting her pole down anytime soon.
Flo Filion Meiler left Thursday for the World Masters Athletics Championship Indoor in Poland, where she’ll compete in events including the long jump, 60-meter hurdles, 800-meter run, pentathlon and pole vault, for which she’s the shoo-in.
The petite, energetic woman from Shelburne, Vermont, said she feels more like 70 than nearly 85.
“But you know, I do train five days a week. And when I found out I was going to compete at the worlds, I’ve been training six days a week because I knew I would really get my body in shape,” she said last week, after training at the University of Vermont.
But she literally won’t have any competition in the pole vault in the championships, which run March 24-31 in Torun, Poland. She is the only one registered in her age group, 80-84, for the sport, for which she set a world record of 6 feet at age 80 at the USA Track and Field Adirondack Championships in Albany, New York. In the men’s pole vault in Torun, nine men are listed as competing in that age group.
“You really have to work at that,” she said of the pole vault. “You have to have the upper core and you have to have timing, and I just love it because it’s challenging.”
The overall world record for women’s pole vaulting is 16.6 feet, according to the International Association of Athletics Federations.
Meiler is used to hard work. She grew up on a dairy farm, where she helped her father with the chores, feeding the cattle and raking hay. In school, she did well at basketball, took tap and ballroom dancing and, living near Lake Champlain, she water skied. Later in life, she and her husband, Eugene, paired up for water skiing competitions.
At age 60, she was competing in doubles tennis with her husband in a qualifying year at the Vermont Senior Games when a friend encouraged her to try the long jump because competitors were needed.
“That was the beginning of my track career,” she said. She took up pole vaulting at 65.
“She pretty much structures her entire life around being a fantastic athlete, which is remarkable at any age, let alone hers,” said Meiler’s coach, Emmaline Berg.
Meiler turns 85 in June, when she’ll head to the National Senior Games in New Mexico.
That will put her in a new age group, in which she hopes to set even more records.