The second place finish came on shortly after of Taormina won the U.S. Sports Thorpe award, which is given annually to an athlete who has achieved excellence in multiple sports.

Taormina recently took a few minutes to talk to usolympicteam.com about the possibility of competing in her fourth Olympic Games and becoming the first American to compete in three different sports in the Olympic Games. To do so, Taormina had to make sacrifices, including selling her two homes in Florida to be able to afford to move across the country and train in the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. Taormina talked about what it takes to overcome the hardships of training for a third Olympic sport and about what the Olympic dream is all about.

Q1: Briefly take us through your career, from the swimming to the triathlon to the pentathlon.

In swimming, during my peak years I did not make the Olympic Team. I went to the Olympic Trials in 1988 and missed the team, went to the Olympic Trials in 1992, did not make the team there. I was 19-years-old and 23-years-old in both of those, and really went through a hard time deciding whether to even continue an athletic career at all since I was past my peak, and decided that I thought there were a few things I could improve in swimming that would give me a shot at making the team. So, 1996 was my very first Olympic team and it was in swimming.

I was 27-years-old, and then I just completely retired from sports as far as I was concerned after that. I never even considered triathlon, didn’t even really know what a triathlon was. So for two years I did no sports at all. I had an opportunity to start my own business, so I bought a camper with a small business loan, and I did swim clinics and school assemblies and drove around the country for two years. I got really out of shape, you know, I gained some weight.So in 1998 I had heard about a local triathlon in Waterloo, which is near Ann Arbor, Mich., and decided that would be a good event to just get me to work out, to get in shape for that. I’d done a 180 in my health and I wanted to get a little bit back into where I had been as a swimmer. So in 1998 I did my first triathlon, just to get back healthy and lose some weight. The race director, Lew Kidder, he was the one who saw me race and he said ‘Hey, I think you have some potential in this sport, I’d like to give you guidance if you are looking for it.’ And I said ‘No thank you sir, I swam for 21 years. I’m really excited to not have to train anymore.’ But I did start training with him just for fun, as far as just staying healthy, because he had a group of women who did track work outs and would get coffee after. Really my triathlon career got started because he encouraged me, and he actually got me a few sponsorships before I had even really thought I was going to do the sport. He had me on the Olympic Team in 2000 for triathlon, because after a few months he had really convinced me to try and give it a go. Then I was hooked on triathlon so I stayed with it through 2004, and had a bad Olympics there. I’d won World Championships that year.

And then the pentathlon thing has just been, Eli Bremer, who’s a pentathlete here (at the Olympic Training Center), when I was out here training for triathlon for a week, I saw Eli and he was the one to say ‘Hey, when are you going to switch over to pentathlon and be the first person to make an Olympic Team in three sports?’ And I had never thought of that, ever in my life, and I said ‘No one’s ever made it in three sports?’ He said ‘I don’t think so.’ It was an intriguing idea and after Athens I took a few months off and decided whether or not I had a competitive desire anymore, and I decided I can still compete. I like it. So I went to the Pentathlon Federation out in San Antonio and gave it a try and here I am doing it I guess through 2008. That’s a long story. Sorry.

Q2: Before you decided to compete in pentathlon, had you ever ridden a horse or shot a gun or done any kind of fencing?

No. I had never held a gun, never ridden a horse in my life, and never even knew what a fencing blade even looked like, or a fencing outfit.  I just kind of had the general public idea of a white outfit.

Q3: So how were you able to pick those up so quickly?

I think I haven’t picked those up very quickly. I mean, I still have a long way to go in those. It’s my belief that generally people who are involved in a sport say, ‘Oh, it takes 10 years to master this sport.’ I challenge that theory to people because I always say, well, does it take a 15-year-old kid 10 years, and that 15-year-old kid doesn’t really think when they are in practice. They don’t think about their technique and they don’t really want to be there. They don’t care about it, and they only train four days a week for one hour a day, does it take them 10 years like it would take a 25-year-old person who’s been in sports their whole life and understands biomechanics and all the things like that, and they think about technique every day and they train six days a week for six hours a day, does it take that person the same amount of time as it takes that 15-year-old who’s brain dead during practice?  People think that I’m picking this up so quickly, but I’m just trying to challenge that theory that--why do we say it takes ten years? It all depends on the person and what they put into it—their mind and their body. I’m just a technique hound.

Q4: What do you think has been the most challenging part of the entire sport for you to pick up?

Just managing five sports and trying to train them, especially when three of them I’m learning from scratch. I didn’t know what taking a six was. I didn’t know what cantering meant in riding. So even mentally, learning the terminology, it has just been overwhelming, so much coming at me in those three sports. And also having to keep my swim and run respectable right now, because that’s what’s helping make up for my lack of performance in the three skill sports, so it’s just been sort of overwhelming. Plus moving from Florida to Colorado this past year this past year in order to train with the pentathlon team here, that was a big move, and financially taking a little bit of a hit sponsorship wise, that’s been stressful.

So you add up everything, and I can kind of see why no one has made an Olympic Team in a third sport. By the time you are ready to do a third sport, you are getting up there in age, where your body is tired. You have to convince sponsors, ‘Yes, I can pick this up, seriously.’  You know, why would they want to give you money when you’ve never done a sport? So, financially you have to pay your bills at this age, and it’s hard to get that. Motivation wise, you’re pretty tired from all the years of pushing. So you add the whole picture up and it’s like, I can see why no one’s done this.

I’m liking it a lot, too. It’s been so cool to be introduced to sports I never would have known about. Like riding a horse? It’s one of the most exhilarating things I’ve ever done in my life. Had I not been doing pentathlon, I would have had no exposure to that probably.

Q5: So how do you balance the five different events? What’s your training schedule like?

That’s something we are in the process of still figuring out. I tend to over train. I want to still keep my swim/run strong, but I’ve got to be doing those other sports as many days of the week as I can. So a lot of the people here at the Olympic Training Center are really looking out for my energy level and motivation level, everyone from the strength people here to sports psychologist Peter Haberl who I talk to. He’s like ‘Hey, recovery is very important.’

So I’m tweaking it all the time. There are weeks when I feel like I’m soaring right through the week and my energy level is great and other weeks where I’m like, ‘Ok I have to back off this week.’ So it’s really just kind of go by feel a little bit and try to have a plan, but you have to alter it at times.

Q6: What would you say is the most challenging part of your entire Olympic career?

My entire Olympic career, the most challenging by far, no question, has been the last year. 2006. I was really happy when the new year hit, 2007. But making the switch to a third sport, I was under the impression that sponsors would embrace this and I even thought sports agents would really get excited about it. And I just got rejection after rejection after rejection.

My triathlon coach kept telling me, ‘Sheila, the day you realize this is your dream and no one else’s, you are going to be a lot happier. No one owes you anything.’ I couldn’t believe I was going broke trying to do this. So I had to make a decision to sell my houses in Florida. I had two homes there. I had done well in triathlon. I had to sell both of them to make this work and move out here. It was sort of humiliating in a way to get down to that level again. I felt like I had earned people’s trust, like ‘Hey, they should trust me. They know what a hard worker I am and if I think I can do this they should believe me.’ My coach kept saying ‘No one owes you anything.’ And he was right, but it hurt. It set me a lot of money back.

Now everything’s gotten a lot better. I have signed with an agency in New York City and they are phenomenal. They see things differently than most agencies. They can just create the story out of it instead of just being like, ‘Hey, you’re the world record holder in five events.’ You know, that’s easy to market. What about these athletes who have unique stories?

So now it’s starting to come along, but 2006 all year was a rough year. Also because I had to go to the World Cups and just get my butt kicked in fencing. I would lose 15 bouts in a row. That’s humiliating and demoralizing. I was just like, ‘I want to quit. I hate this!’

Q7: So when you get to a point like that, where you are losing 15 bouts in a row and you want to quit, how do you overcome that? Where do you go from there?

I didn’t do a good job of overcoming that. I screamed at the coach at a couple of World Cups, I remember I said ‘Don’t send me to these anymore until I’m ready!’ And he said ‘You have to get experience. I know this is embarrassing for you, but you need to be here.’

And I was just under so much stress. The way I got through it was a couple of things. Our head coach, he was just so patient, because he knows the stress. He won the gold medal in 1976 in pentathlon. He knows how stressful. We had good heart-to-heart talks.

I met with the sports psychologist, Peter Haberl, here at the OTC about the stresses I was feeling. He teaches a meditation class on Wednesday nights here that I’ve started to do so that when you feel that anxiety and overwhelmed feeling coming up you know how to manage things like that better. I did not manage it well this year. There were hundreds of times last year where I said ‘I should quit, because this is not mentally healthy for me.’ My sisters and brothers and mom and dad even said ‘Maybe you should quit. We’ve never seen you like this before.’ But I was just like, I know it will pass. 

So the way you get through it is support from those people, but then also knowing it will pass. That’s what making the Olympics is about—who can withstand the tough times and make that breakthrough. It’s perseverance. It’s belief in the future. That’s one thing that’s always been my strength is that perseverance believing that ‘Hey, I’ll get it. I will get it. It’s rough, it’s ugly right now, thank God people aren’t kicking me out.’ They had every right to kick me out with how I got mad sometimes.

Q8: What would you say is your favorite or the coolest part of pentathlon?

You know what? I love every individual sport. I mean, the whole sport, in itself, ok that’s cool. But if you just take the sport of shooting. The appreciation I’ve gained for these skill sports is something I didn’t know I was going to gain when I started pentathlon.

So my favorite part is the challenge within every sport and how unique. That’s why pentathlon is so cool, because it really embodies such a diverse set of sports. Triathlon has three sports in it, but they are all endurance related. So my main thing in triathlon was just be tough. Just be mentally and physically tough. But in pentathlon it doesn’t work that way. There’s such a mental focus component. So my favorite part is really learning these different skill sets.

But if I had to pick a sport that I’m so glad learned it would be the equestrian show jumping. Exhilarating. Absolutely exhilarating. I never thought it would be. I mean, I just get geeked when I’m jumping on a horse.

Q9: What do you do to mentally prepare for an event?

I’m working on that actually. That’s where the mental focus that I talked about in those skill sports is something that I’m developing just as much as an athlete has to develop their muscles. My mind is something that’s learning just the type of focus it takes to concentrate. We have 20 individual shots in a shooting competition, so you have to get focused 20 times. And then you have 31 fencing bouts, so you have to get refocused 31 times. So you are really focused the minute that you are bouting, and then you sit down and you wait for three minutes until your next bout comes up. So you are always up-down, up-down. Mentally it’s totally different from triathlon. Triathlon was such a more physically preparation for me, like what I ate and getting the rest. Pentathlon, I’m still learning that process of getting mentally ready--whether I should drink coffee in the morning before shooting. Does that affect me adversely, or is it better to have a half a cup of coffee in the morning because that’s what I’m used to? So things like that, I’ve experimented with all last year, and I think I’m starting to get my game plan.

Q10: Your first Olympic Games were more than ten years ago. What has kept you going this long? What is your most frequent source of motivation?

I actually pray to God. I have a Christian faith and even though this year has been a rough year, I never lost my faith. This is a gift. There were times when I wondered, God, did I hear you wrong. I thought this was a gift that was presented where the doors were opening. My source of motivation is that this has been a gift that presented to me and I’m going to work the best I can with it.

Also, just as far as people go, when I’m feeling down, my coach is a great coach to talk to. I also go back and talk to my swimming coach and my triathlon coach. It wasn’t perfect when I was training for those sports, either. There were lots of ups and downs. They know what type of an athlete I am and how it fluctuates. Sometimes I go back and talk to coaches who have known me.

Q11: What’s the best advice you’ve received from coaches you go back and talk to?

Each coach is something different. My swimming coach, Greg Phil at Clarenceville Swim Club back in Livonia, Mich., he was the one who taught me… I applied to the resident swimming program in 1994 here at the Olympic Training Center and I wasn’t accepted and that devastated me because I thought this was the only place I could be to try to make the ’96 swim team. He said ‘Hey, if you want to train for ’96, I’ll coach you here at Clarenceville.’ And I laughed at him. I said ‘You want me to train with the little kids and try and make the team?’ The main thing he taught me was ‘Hey, all I know is you have a dream and you have no where else to go. Maybe we don’t have all the stuff that the Olympic Training Center has, and maybe your teammates aren’t as fast as the people out there, but you know what? We’ve got water in our pool. And that’s what swimmers need.’ He taught me that you work with what you’ve got. You don’t have to be in the perfect environment to make your dreams come true. He taught me that success is taking what you’ve been given and you work as hard as you can with that. And then no matter what the results, you’ll be fine.

Then Lew Kidder, the triathlon coach, he was like ‘I think you can make the Olympic Team in 2000.’ Here it was the end of 1998, beginning of ’99 and I’m like, ‘That’s in a year, Lew.’ And he goes, ‘Well, let’s shoot for the moon.’ He was the one who said ‘Why does it have to take ten years to make the Olympics? We’ll shoot for the moon. You might not hit the moon, but if we don’t shoot for it, we’ll never hit it. So let’s go for it.’ He goes ‘You want to go for it?’ And I’m like, ‘All right.’

I wasn’t a runner. He had me doing track workouts probably way before you should do track work outs. And I got injured more, but he got me in shape enough to make the team. So that whole shoot for the moon concept was really cool.

Q12: What advice would you have for someone who’s interested in pentathlon but has never ridden a horse before?

Really there’s only one place you can come to get any type of advice in the sport of pentathlon, and that’s here in Colorado Springs at the Olympic Training Center. We’re not like the Eastern European countries that have pentathlon clubs all over their country. We pretty much have one, and it’s here. So I would say get in touch with the athletes and the coaches out here, and let us, the coaches and the athletes, introduce you to what shooting is like and what riding is like. And then if there is further interest and you go back to your hometown, we would be able to help an athlete get set up with an appropriate fencing club—hopefully there would be a fencing club in their area. When you go to other places you have to kind of be with the fencing club, then you’re with a riding coach, a shooting program. It’s not like there is a pentathlon group. So when you’re with the individual sports it’s a little tougher.

.