Photo by Kirby Lee, USA Today
Cal Track: Volunteer Coach Tianna Bartoletta Set to Leap Toward A Third Olympics
Like the rest of us, Tianna Bartoletta is just trying to get to the other side of all this.
The two-time Olympian and three-time gold medal winner arrived in Berkeley last October to serve as a volunteer coach with the Bears’ track and field team while training for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
“I knew the environment would be pretty close to perfect,” she said of going to work for new Cal coach Robyne Johnson. “The weather, the amount of work-life balance one can achieve here in the Bay Area is amazing and really important to me because training is really difficult.
“It’s a full-time job and you’ve got to feel supported in other ways. I’m also a yogi, so the Bay Area was like a no-brainer.”
*** Bartoletta talks about coming to Cal to work with Johnson and close friend Chuck Ryan, the Bears' full-time sprints, hurdles and relays assistant:
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*** Johnson explains what Bartoletta's presence provides the Bears:
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Perfect, until . . . the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March and Cal’s spring outdoor track season was canceled. And Edwards Stadium, where Bartoletta planned to train, was locked. And the Tokyo Games were postponed until 2021.
Then there was the day early last December when Bartoletta wondered if she might ever be healthy enough to compete again.
*** How Tianna Bartoletta funnels her rage through her online blog.
For years, she had outrun — or leaped over — most challenges. She won the long jump at the world championships as a 19-year-old at Tennessee. In 2012, she ran the opening leg on the USA 4x100 relay team that set a world record at the London Olympics. And four years later, she claimed another victory in the short relay at the Rio Olympics and leaped 23 feet, 6 1/4 inches (7.17 meters) to beat USA teammate and defending champion Brittney Reese for the long jump gold.
But beginning late in 2017, Bartoletta began experiencing longer and longer menstrual periods. Fatigue and dizziness hindered her workouts, but she always convinced herself she simply needed to get a better night’s sleep.
She sprained her left ankle — her takeoff foot for the long jump — during the 2018 season while her bleeding worsened.
*** Bartoletta discusses her career-threatening health issues:
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Out of concern that a change in her hormones might trigger a violation of the sport’s anti-doping rules, Bartoletta ruled out using birth control to manage her cycle.
“Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure it out so I kept hemorrhaging during the menstrual cycles,” she said. “Eventually, that just never ended and I was hemorrhaging every day.”
While in the Netherlands at a track meet in 2019, Bartoletta received an email from a medical doctor with track and field’s world governing body informing her she was severely anemic.
“They said I needed to go to the hospital ASAP because my iron levels were dangerously low and had been dropping over a long period of time.”
After failing to make the U.S. team for the 2019 world championships — the defending Olympic champ finished last in a field of 17 jumpers at the trials — she traveled to the U.S. Olympic training center in Colorado Springs to get help.
The doctor’s reaction: “I don’t even know how you’re walking around.”
Bartoletta was prescribed a series of iron infusions, but they made no difference. While continuing to train, Bartoletta passed out during practice one day. And her ankle sprain from the year before still had not healed, prompting her to try taking off with her right foot. She called the experiment “a disaster.”
Back in Colorado Springs, and empowered by feedback women gave her through her blog, Bartoletta told doctors she would find a cure or retire from track and field. She demanded to see a gynecologist, then asked for a transvaginal ultrasound.
“He was shocked that I even knew what it was,” Bartoletta recalled. But she got the test, and “we could see filling my entire uterus . . . a tumor."
Four hours later, Bartoletta underwent emergency surgery.
The tumor was benign and her excessive menstrual bleeding stopped. But two months later she still wasn’t feeling like herself. Granted a medical waiver by track and field officials, Bartoletta received a two-pint blood transfusion.
Could she be ready for the Olympic trials in June? “I was going to try, but it was probably Mission: Impossible,” When the Tokyo Games were postponed until 2021, and Bartoletta was one of the few beneficiaries.
Now, even though she will be approaching 36 years old next summer, Bartoletta is confident she can return to her 2016 level. Her ankle strong again, she has resumed her more natural approach of jumping off her left foot.
“I went from feeling like I was last year’s Miss America, who just had to put the crown on the next person . . . to being able to actually get myself back to a position where I can be in the arena and fight to keep it.”
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Tianna Bartoletta, left, celebrates after setting a world record at the 2012 Olympics
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THE TIANNA BARTOLETTA FILE
Age: 35
Personal bests: 23-6 1/4 in the long jump (No. 4 on all-time U.S. list); 10.78 in the 100; 40.82 in the 4x100 relay (world record, set at the 2012 London Olympics)
Olympic medals: gold in 4x100 relay (2012), gold in long jump (2016), gold in 4x100 relay (2016)
World Outdoor Championship medals: gold in long jump (2005), gold in long jump (2015), bronze in long jump (2017)
World Indoor Championship medals: gold in long jump (2006); bronze in 60 meters (2012); bronze in 60 meters (2014)
U.S. Outdoor Championship medals: gold in long jump (2014), gold in long jump (2015), gold in long jump (2017)
U.S. Indoor Championship medals: gold in 60 meters (2012), gold in 60 meters (2014), gold in 60 meters (2015)
NCAA Outdoor Championship titles: Champion in long jump (2005)
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Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo
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