Record-setting pole vaulter, 84, aims for some even higher goals
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, Vt., 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 track and field training at the University of Vermont.
But she literally won’t have any competition in the pole vault in the championships, which runs 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 at age 80. In the men’s pole vault, nine men are listed as competing in that age group.
Meiler said the events she likes best are the hurdles and the pole vault — one of the more daring track and field events, in which competitors run while carrying a fiberglass or composite pole, launch themselves over a high bar and land on a mat.
“You really have to work at that,” she said. “You have to have the upper core and you have to have timing, and I just love it because it’s challenging.”
Meiler, who worked for 30 years as a sales representative for Herbalife nutritional supplements, and her husband, Eugene, who was a military pilot and then became a financial analyst, together competed in water skiing.
She’s a relative newcomer to pole vaulting and track and field, overall. 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, standing in a room of her home, surrounded by hundreds of hanging medals. She took up pole vaulting at 65.
Athletics has helped her through some hard times, she said. She and her husband adopted three children after losing two premature babies and a 3-year-old. Two years ago, their son died at age 51.
Setting a record at age 80 with a 6-foot vault at the USA Track and Field Adirondack Championships in Albany, N.Y., while her husband watched, Meiler said, was one of her happiest days.
“I was screaming, I was so happy,” she said.
The overall world record for women’s pole vaulting is 16.6 feet, according to the International Association of Athletics Federations.
Meiler turns 85 in June, when she’ll head to the National Senior Games in New Mexico.