Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 19, 1993 TAG: 9307190040
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY COX STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Not a just a Games record. Not just a state record. Not just a U.S. record. A world record.
The record was set by a woman who didn't take up the sport until age 50. It won't become official until the bureaucracy of United States Track and Field, the governing body of the sport, sorts out the paperwork. Meet director Joe LaRocco said he thought the time would qualify as a record.
Leonore McDaniels of Virginia Beach, 65, cruised through the 300-meter hurdles in 1 minute, 6.9 seconds. She finished last. Even for an athlete of her considerable caliber, it's tough racing high school-age competition.
"I felt so clumsy out there,"she said.
How she felt is one thing. How she looked was another. She did not hit or otherwise mistreat any hurdle and she negotiated the course in the oppressive heat and humidity at Salem High gracefully and with style.
Just what you'd expect from a world-class athlete.
To date she holds three (presuming the 300 hurdles time goes through) world records and three American ones for the 65-70 age bracket. The other two are 4 feet, 1 inch in the high jump and her 5-8 1/2 pole vault.
"Things have been good since I turned 65 in March," she said.
They could have been better had she exceeded her mark in the high jump Sunday, which she could not quite pull off, clearing 4-0. But there will be other days. She'll be going to the World Veterans' Championship in Japan in October, the third time she's ventured abroad to compete.
Fear and doubt do not seem to have played a role in her development. If they did, she would never have taken up the pole vault three years ago. That event has been banned in most high schools in this area because it is too dangerous.
She worked with a coach she'd met from Florida for two weeks and almost instantly had a world record.
"There's nobody in the pole vault in my age group, believe me," she said in the faint accent of her native Germany. "It gets lonely out there. I keep thinking, surely there is somebody in my age group who can do this. I think they must just lack the courage to try."
One time she tried to enter the pole vault at the Golden Olympics for older athletes but was barred. No women allowed. Irked, she demanded to know why.
"Because that is the way we've always done it," she was told.
"This is the '90s," she said. "It is about time for that to change."
McDaniels keeps the infirmities of age at bay with weekly training and competition in either six or seven events at every meet she attends year-round. She also holds five indoor track world records.
"Those are easier to get," she said. "There aren't as many who compete."
A happy marriage also helps. She and Russell McDaniels have been hitched for 40 years now and are enjoying their retirement from the Army in a manner best described as with vigor. He competes too, in everything from the jumps to the weight events.
"We took up tennis when we were 50 and went to the Golden Olympics to play and saw all the people in track and field and said to ourselves, `That looks like fun, too,' " he said.
With three grown children, they had the time to pursue the new avocation. Neither had been athletes previously, although both remained active, he by jogging, she by working in the garden and other household management activities.
She has exceeded him in accomplishment - his triumphs have remained at the state and regional level - but he seems to get as much of a rush from her success as she does.
One of the keys for her progress was working out with the track team at Salem High in Virginia Beach. She said Salem coach Cletus Griffin was a major influence.
"You can't get better without coaching," she said.
There was a peripheral advantage to working out with high school kids.
"They inspired me and I think I might have inspired them too."
Finding facilities at which to train are still a problem. The McDaniels usually train during the week at First Colonial High and on the weekend at Norfolk Academy, where there are long jump and pole vault pits.
Leonore McDaniels said athletics has changed her life.
"I'm getting to be very independent," she said.
Russ McDaniels had another word for it.
"Bossy."
So be it. Anybody who had eight world records after raising three children has a right to take charge.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***