With the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, fast approaching, we're seeing stories about sports that don't usually make the news. Right after the New Year re: spotted two stories that originated at the U.S. Olympic trials for speed skating, which took place in Salt Lake City.
AARP's "Life Reimagined" series recently focused on 50 year-old Jacki Munzel—an ex-national level figure skater—who is currently competing with kids less than half her age for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team. Frankly, the odds are long for her making the Olympic team, but that doesn't take anything away from Munzel's skating cred. Her day job is, she's a power skating coach for NHL players. She's old enough to be their mom, too.
Bruce Conner (perhaps frustratingly) will always be known as "the brother of gymnast Bart Conner"—a member of the gold medal-winning U.S. men's team in nineteen eighty-four.
Astonishingly, Munzel wasn't the oldest competitor trying for a spot on the U.S. team. That was Bruce Conner, who made the standard that allowed him to attend the trials at the age of fifty-seven. Conner was sanguine about his chances of making the team, telling one reporter, "My Olympics is the trials."