An 84-year-old pole vaulter is not putting her pole down any time soon.
Flo Filion Meiler on Thursday left for the World Masters Athletics Championship Indoor in Poland, where she is to compete in events including the long jump, 60m hurdles, 800m run, pentathlon and pole vault, for which she is the shoo-in.
The petite, energetic woman from Shelburne, Vermont, said she feels more like 70 than nearly 85.
Photo: AP
“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.
However, she literally will not have any competition in the pole vault in the championships, which runs from today to Sunday next week in Torun.
She is the only one registered in her age group, 80 to 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 that she the events she likes best are the hurdles and the pole vault — one of the more daring track-and-field events.
“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 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 water skied.
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.
“Many times when I did water ski competition I was the only gal in my age group,” she said.
She is a relative newcomer to track and field. 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 though some hard times, she said.
She and her husband adopted three children after losing two premature biological babies and a three-year-old. Two years ago, their son died at age 51.
She said she desperately misses her training partner, a woman who started having health problems about five years ago and can no longer train.
It is tough to train alone, she said, adding that she hopes to find a new partner.
“She’s incredibly serious about what she does,” said Meiler’s coach, Emmaline Berg. “She comes in early to make sure she’s warmed up enough. She goes home and stretches a lot. So she pretty much structures her entire life around being a fantastic athlete, which is remarkable at any age, let alone hers.”
It has paid off, said Berg, an assistant track coach at Vermont.
Berg herself started following Meiler 10 years ago while she was a student at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College, watching her at the annual Dartmouth Relays.
“She was like a local celebrity,” she said.
Setting a record at age 80 with a 1.8m pole vault at the USA Track and Field Adirondack Championships in Albany, New York, while her husband watched was one of her happiest days, Meiler said.
“I was screaming, I was so happy,” she said.
Meiler turns 85 in June, when she is to head to the National Senior Games in New Mexico.
That would put her in a new age group, in which she hopes to set even more records.
Meiler’s athletic achievements are remarkable and something to be celebrated, University of Vermont Center on Aging director Michael LaMantia said.
Pole vaulting clearly is not for everyone of her age, but in general, activity should be, LaMantia said.
“She can serve as a role model for other seniors,” he said.
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