This story by Briana Brady was first published by the Shelburne News on April 17.
Flo Meiler pointed with her foot to a line on the ground at the University of Vermont’s indoor track last Friday.
“I forgot my tape today, but this is usually where I jump from,” she said.
After marking her spot, Meiler walked away from the sand pit, further and further back, until she had enough room to run. The 90-year-old Shelburne resident then sped down the track, arms pumping, and with a hop, a skip and a jump, landed her triple jump in the sand.
Meiler isn’t just a casual hobbyist when it comes to track events — she’s still competing.
At last month’s Masters Indoor World Championships in Gainesville, Florida, Meiler brought home eight gold medals in her age category. She smoked the competition when it came to the triple jump, the hurdles and the pentathlon.
Although she regularly competes in 10 or so events, she said the pole vault is her favorite, partly because she finds it the most challenging. Meiler likes a challenge.
In addition to her gold medal wins at the Masters championship, Meiler added another four world records to the 35 she had already amassed over the years. This time, she set the record for pentathlon, 60-meter hurdles (24.87 seconds), triple jump (14’9¼”), and pole vault (4’6”) for women ages 90-94.
Meiler didn’t initially set out to be a track champion — she didn’t even try her first event until she was in her 60s. The way she tells it, she was playing tennis with her husband when long-time South Burlington athletics coach, and track star in her own right, Barbara Jordan, approached her.
“She said, ‘Flo, I would like you to come and try the long jump when you’re done with tennis,’” Meiler said. “I went and tried the long jump, and that was 30 years ago, and I’m still going.”
Meiler’s competitive streak goes much farther back. Unlike other schools at the time — 20 years before Title IX would drastically increase girls’ access to sports — Meiler’s high school in upstate New York had a girls’ basketball team.
“I went to school at St Mary’s Academy, and they had a boarding school also, and we happened to have the best girls’ basketball team in the area,” she said.
Meiler grew up on a dairy farm in Champlain, New York, where she said she built up her muscles doing chores. That strength served her in basketball, as well as in cheerleading, and then after high school, competitive waterskiing.
“We even put on ski shows, and I was part of a pyramid. I was on the bottom. We used to try to get the smallest girl we could find to put on our shoulders,” Meiler said.
These days, Meiler is something of a celebrity in the track world. When she goes to meets, she said, people are always coming up to her to take photos together. Lately, she’s been asking that people email her a copy of the photos they take with her – she wants to make a book full of them.
“It feels really warm when that many people come up to you and say, ‘Oh Flo, you are such an inspiration,’” she said.
It’s not just strangers. Meiler said that her husband of 64 years, Gene, always sneaks little notes into her bags when she goes away to a meet.
“He writes me a little note almost every time that I go and puts it in my luggage. ‘Good luck, and I’m so proud of you.’ My husband does that all the time,” she said.
According to Meiler, not many people her age are interested in spending the amount of time that she does on exercise. She trains six days a week, often at UVM’s indoor track or at South Burlington High School. There’s a 15-minute warm up that she does at home. Then she spends another 15 minutes stretching at the track. There’s more warmup running. Then training for her events. In total, she spends about an hour and a half to two hours each time she trains.
Taking the time to warm up properly is important at her age, she said. Training and competing can take a toll on the body as you age.
Three years ago, she hit her left ankle on a hurdle. Her entire leg turned black and blue. It took her months to get back to the track, and even now, she still has to walk over the hurdles rather than jump.
“I always come back,” she said.
On Friday, she practiced her hammer throw, swinging a five-pound ball at the end of a wire around and around above her head before releasing it behind her into the net. Nearby, a couple of college athletes stretched and chatted. Sometimes, Meiler said, the UVM coach will invite her to practice with the girls.
Clearing up, Meiler piled her things into the same red wagon she said she used to pull her children around in when they were little. It might be old, she said, but it still gets the job done.
