Melinda Owen has dedicated almost a decade to training for the U.S. Track and Field Olympic trials. The 27-year-old Polson native has been one of the best women pole vaulters in the nation. She placed 10th at the 2008 Olympic Trials, seven spots shy of qualifying. The following year she earned third at the Indoor National Championships, positioning herself as a serious contender for the 2012 London Olympics.
In her own words, “By working hard, you make your own luck.”
But then last July, less than a year before the 2012 trials, a haunting injury reemerged. Owen needed major surgery on her ankle, her third procedure since eighth grade. She had been competing through pain almost all of her adult life. Owen suffered frequent bone spurs. Then bone bruises and fractures and osteoporosis. Pretty soon she had no cartilage left. Doctors said her ankle had become similar to a 70-year-old’s.
After surgery, when her doctors cleared her, she resumed training. But the pain remained. In March, four months before the trials, Owen desperately underwent another surgery. She couldn’t run for weeks afterward, but the pain began slowly disappearing.
The Olympic Trials started in Eugene, Ore., on June 21. Owen entered with only 12 indoor practices after her latest surgery. On her second attempt she cleared the opening height of 13 feet, 11 1/4 inches. The next mark — 14 feet, 5 1/4 inches — was well within her range. Her personal best was 14 feet, 11 inches.
But on June 24 there was too much to overcome. On her last attempt Owen lost hold of the pole and crashed below. She finished in 13th place. Her personal best would have tied her for second place.
“I’m definitely disappointed. It’s hard to swallow,” she said the following day. “I knew I wasn’t going to have a lot of time to prepare but we did everything we possibly could’ve. It just was how the hand was dealt. But I definitely gave it my all.”
Owen said she isn’t sure what this means for her pole vaulting career. She said the sport doesn’t define her as a person, but it has been a passion almost her entire life. Owen, a 2003 Polson High graduate, still holds some of the state’s best marks.
“It’s so hard to think about quitting at this point,” she said. “I think I want to keep fighting a little longer, and if my ankle holds up, one year at a time I want to see if I can get back to what I was doing.”
The disappointment of falling short at another Olympic trials was heartbreaking, Owen said. But then she remembers looking into the stands at Hayward Field. Family and friends who traveled from home were gathered wearing T-shirts that read “Made in Montana” with a pole vaulter, Owen, inside the state’s outline.
“I have so much support. I’m so fortunate,” she said. “I think about yesterday, so many girls went away with their heads down and they had no one there. I had almost 40 people there to give me hugs and tell me how much I meant to them. That was so special.”