Pole vaulter, 84, sets her sights on more record

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 recently, 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 through March 31 in Torun, Poland. 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 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, brace it against the ground to 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 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.

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'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 biological babies and a 3-year-old. Two years ago, their son died at age 51.

And she desperately misses her training partner, a woman who started having health problems about five years ago and can no longer train. It's tough to train alone, she said, and 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."

And it has paid off, said Berg, an assistant track coach at Vermont.

Berg herself first started following Meiler 10 years ago while she was a student at 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 6-foot 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.

"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.

That will 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, said Dr. Michael LaMantia, director of the University of Vermont Center on Aging.

Pole vaulting clearly isn't 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.