Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Multi-sport star Sheila Taormina, seeking to become the first athlete to compete in the Olympics in three sports, believes she clinched a berth on the U.S. Olympic team in modern pentathlon this weekend.

But the U.S. Olympic Committee does not see it that way.

Taormina, a former Olympic swimmer and triathlete who is now the highest ranked U.S. female pentathlete in the world, said she has been emotionally in tatters since learning that a major x difference in interpretation of the sport's voluminous U.S. Olympic selection procedures could leave her off the team when the squad is nominated by the USOC in early June.

"I've cried just about every day for the last week," she said by cellphone from a World Cup event in Prague.

She's also consulted with Chicago-based lawyer John Collins, who has handled many Olympic sport cases, through her coach, Lew Kidder.

The way she and Kidder see it, three American women -- Taormina, Margaux Isaksen and Michelle Kelly -- will each earn a performance-based Olympic invitation from the international pentathlon union (UIPM). Because the United States is allowed to send only two athletes, that will force the decision to the designated tie-breaking procedure: results in the 2008 modern pentathlon world cup, which wrapped up this weekend.

In those standings, Taormina is ninth; Isaksen, 10th; and Kelly, 29th.

Isaksen "and I have earned it," Taormina said. "Bottom line. No question. Case closed."

But the UIPM has said it will send out two lists of qualifiers and only Kelly, who earned her invitation with her bronze medal at last year's Pan American Games, is expected to be on the first list sent out June 1. That list will contain largely athletes who have won medals at designated regional championships. Taormina and Isaksen, who would receive what would amount to at-large invitations, would then be on a second list sent out June 15.

If the USOC accepts the invitation for Kelly -- as Kidder said he has been told -- then the tiebreaker would be between Taormina and Isaksen. As things stand, Isaksen would lose out. But if she performs well at the world championships later this month, then Taormina could be left out.

"I have played honestly and ethically and put my head down and done the work," Taormina said. "That's what's driving me mad. I have never faced this before in sports."

USOC spokesman Darryl Seibel said the organization is playing by the rules: "The qualification procedures for the U.S. team were finalized and published in January 2008, and those are the procedures we will follow in naming the team."

-- Amy Shipley