{"id":794094,"date":"2019-03-23T15:36:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-23T21:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/pole-vaulter-84-sets-her-sights-on-more-records\/"},"modified":"2019-03-23T15:36:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-23T21:36:00","slug":"pole-vaulter-84-sets-her-sights-on-more-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/pole-vaulter-84-sets-her-sights-on-more-records\/","title":{"rendered":"Pole vaulter, 84, sets her sights on more records"},"content":{"rendered":"
Florence “Flo” Filion Meiler, an 84-year-old record-setting pole vaulter, poses while training at the University of Vermont indoor track in Burlington, Vermont earlier this mont. Meiler is headed to the world championships in Poland. She is competing in track and field events including the long jump, 60-meter hurdles, 800-meter run and pentathlon. But she’s a shoo-in for the pole vault.<\/strong>
Lisa Rathke \/ AP | AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BURLINGTON, Vt. \u2014 An 84-year-old pole vaulter isn\u2019t putting her pole down anytime soon.<\/p>\n

Flo Filion Meiler left Thursday for the World Masters Athletics Championship Indoor in Poland, where she\u2019ll compete in events including the long jump, 60-meter hurdles, 800-meter run, pentathlon and pole vault, for which she\u2019s the shoo-in.<\/p>\n

The petite, energetic woman from Shelburne, Vermont, said she feels more like 70 than nearly 85.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, you know, I do train five days a week. And when I found out I was going to compete at the worlds, I\u2019ve been training six days a week because I knew I would really get my body in shape,\u201d she said last week, after track and field training at the University of Vermont.<\/p>\n

But she literally won\u2019t 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\u2019s pole vault, nine men are listed as competing in that age group.<\/p>\n

Meiler said the events she likes the best are the hurdles and the pole vault \u2014 one of the more daring track and field events, in which competitors run while carrying a fiberglass or composite pole, brace it against the ground to launch themselves over a high bar, and land on a mat.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou really have to work at that,\u201d she said. \u201cYou have to have the upper core and you have to have timing, and I just love it because it\u2019s challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany times when I did water ski competition I was the only gal in my age group,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was the beginning of my track career,\u201d she said, standing in a room of her home, surrounded by hundreds of hanging medals. She took up pole vaulting at 65.<\/p>\n

Athletics has helped her through some hard times, she said. She and her husband adopted three children after losing two premature biological babies and a 3-year-old. Two years ago, their son died at age 51.<\/p>\n

And she desperately misses her training partner, a woman who started having health problems about five years ago and can no longer train. It\u2019s tough to train alone, she said, and she hopes to find a new partner.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s incredibly serious about what she does,\u201d said Meiler\u2019s coach, Emmaline Berg. \u201cShe comes in early to make sure she\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it has paid off, said Berg, an assistant track coach at Vermont.<\/p>\n

Berg herself first started following Meiler 10 years ago while she was a student at New Hampshire\u2019s Dartmouth College, watching her at the annual Dartmouth Relays.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was like a local celebrity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Setting a record at age 80 with a 6-foot (1.8-meter) pole vault at the USA Track and Field Adirondack Championships in Albany, New York, while her husband watched, Meiler said, was one of her happiest days.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was screaming, I was so happy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The overall world record for women\u2019s pole vaulting is 16.6 feet, according to the International Association of Athletics Federations.<\/p>\n

Meiler turns 85 in June, when she\u2019ll head to the National Senior Games in New Mexico.<\/p>\n

That will put her in a new age group, in which she hopes to set even more records.<\/p>\n

Meiler\u2019s athletic achievements are remarkable and something to be celebrated, said Dr. Michael LaMantia, director of the University of Vermont Center on Aging.<\/p>\n

Pole vaulting clearly isn\u2019t for everyone of her age, but in general, activity should be, LaMantia said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe can serve as a role model for other seniors,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Florence “Flo” Filion Meiler, an 84-year-old record-setting pole vaulter, poses while training at the University of Vermont indoor track in Burlington, Vermont earlier this mont. Meiler is headed to the world championships in Poland. She is competing in track and field events including the long jump, 60-meter hurdles, 800-meter run and pentathlon. But she’s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-794094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 00:39:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}