Stephanie Brown Trafton

Infobox runner
runnername = Stephanie Brown Trafton

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imagesize = 150px
caption =
fullname =
nicknames =
nationality = flag icon|US United States [Birth certificate and passport agree...Stephanie is a natural born U.S. citizen.]
collegeteam = Cal Poly
club=Nike
birthdate = birth date and age|mf=yes|1979|12|1
birthplace = San Luis Obispo, California
residence = Galt, California
retired=
deathdate =
deathplace =
height =height|ft=6|in=4cite web|accessdate=2008-08-18
url=http://www.usatf.org/athletes/bios/Brown_Stephanie.asp
title=Stephanie Brown Trafton (bio)
publisher=USATF]
weight =lb to st lb|num=210|abbr=mos
medaltemplates=

Stephanie Brown Trafton (born December 1, 1979) is an American track and field athlete who won the discus throwing gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. She is a somewhat unusual modern athlete in that she is a two-time Olympian who has never qualified for the World Championships,cite news|accessdate=2008-08-19
http://www.iaaf.org/OLY08/news/kind=103/newsid=46935.html
title=Brown Trafton Delivers Unlikely First U.S. Gold in Beijing
author=Powell, David
date=August 18, 2008
work=IAAF News] nor won a major national championship.cite web|url=http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/beijing/track/2008-08-18-discus-usa-gold_N.htm|title=Unheralded Brown Trafton hurls golden discus for USA|last=Patrick|first=Dick|date=2008-08-18|work=USA Today|language=English|accessdate=2008-08-28]

Pre-Olympic career

Brown Trafton has said she was inspired to become an Olympian as a 4-year-old watching Mary Lou Retton perform in the 1984 Summer Olympics.cite news|accessdate=2008-08-18
url=http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080731/A_SPORTS/807310333
title=Olympic-sized dream: Galt resident set sights on Games at an early age
author=Anderson, Jason
date=July 31, 2008
work=The Record] After a youth of attempting several different sports, she eventually divided her time between athletics and basketball. She competed in the discus and shot put at Arroyo Grande High School, and was the California State high school champion in shot put in 1996. After placing second in 1997, she recaptured the California shot put title in 1998. At the same meet, she added the California discus title to her resume. As of 2008, her unit foot|181.25|2|lk=on|sing=on throw to secure victory remains one of the 10 best "American" high school discus throws in history.

Nevertheless, she seemed to be headed towards a career in basketball, after being awarded a scholarship for both basketball and track and field to Cal Poly. Her career was ended in that sport prematurely by a torn anterior cruciate ligament. Thereafter, she concentrated on track and field. She competed at the collegiate level in shot put and discus from 1999 to 2003, but missed 2000, while recovering from the knee injury. Brown-Trafton was named as an NCAA All-American 6 times in her college career, two times during the indoor season as a shot putter and four times in the outdoor season for discus and shot put. Her highest finishes at the NCAA Division I national championships were second in discus in 2003 and fourth in shot put in 2003.cite news|accessdate=2008-08-22
url=http://www.dyestatcal.com/?pg=dyestatcal2008Track-News-2008-July-08-Calif-Olympian-Males#StephanieBrownTrafton
title=Golden State 08 Olympians
author=Speck, Doug
year=2008
work=A Completed Series on those with a Golden State High School or University Background heading to the Beijing Games
publisher=DyeStatCal.com]

2004 Olympics

Stephanie competed in the 2004 Olympic Trials in Sacramento, CA in both the shot put and the discus throw. Her best throw coming in to the discus competition was 192 feet. In the first throw of the discus final, Brown threw a 9 foot personal best of 201 feet 3 inches, surpassing the international A-standard mark, and qualified for her first Olympic team.

In August 2004, Stephanie Brown competed at the Athens Games, and her best mark in the qualifying round failed to advance her to the finals. She placed 22nd with a throw of 58.54 m, under her 61.90 m personal best at the time. She has expressed contentment with her performance there, saying, "2004 gave me an awesome experience. I came to the Olympics just out of college."

The 2008 Season

In the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, Brown Trafton made what observers called "stunning improvement".cite news|accessdate=2008-08-19
url= http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/display_article.php?id=22617 |title=Jack Pfeifer's Report from Salinas Discus
author=Pfeifer, Jack
date=May 8, 2008
work=Track & Field News] She began 2008 with a personal best that was unchanged from 2004. However, she improved that mark in March, April and May 2008. Coming into the Beijing Olympics, her personal best was 66.17 m, achieved at the Hartnell Throwers Meet in Salinas, California. Until a June 21, 2008 mark of 66.51 m by Romanian Nicoleta Grasu,cite news|accessdate=2008-08-19
url= http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/biographies/country=ROU/athcode=67956/index.html |title=IAAF biography on Grasu Nicoleta
author=International Association of Athletics Federations
date=August 18, 2008
work=iaaf.org] this throw stood as the longest on record anywhere in the world in 2008. Moreover, it was the third-best American throw of all time, behind efforts by Suzy Powell and Becky Breisch.

Immediately prior to Beijing, she had placed third at the U.S. trials with a throw of 62.63 m and second at the US national championship.

Asked to explain her dramatic improvement, Brown Trafton pointed to a key difference in her training regimen. Unusually for her, she did not take time off between the 2007 and 2008 seasons. Instead, she spent what would have normally been the season hiatus working on the "supplemental training" of "balance, agility and flexibility" with Tony Mikia, a physical therapist/sports performance trainer at Sacramento-based [http://www.resultstherapy.com/ Results Physical Therapy and Sports Performance] .

2008 Olympics

Performance

Although called by the mainstream American sports press "an unlikely savior of U.S. pride"cite news|accessdate=2008-08-18
url=http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/trackandfield/columns/story?columnist=cyphers_luke&id=3541231|title=Brown Trafton, Taylor spur sluggish American track team
author=Cypers, Luke
date=August 18, 2008
work=ESPN The Magazine] and a "field filler more than a medal contender",cite news|accessdate=2008-08-19
url=http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iruwqlX0la3yfvEXq_Ob56DJvH1QD92KP4P00
author=Pells, Eddie
title=Women's discus is US's first track and field gold
date=August 18, 2008
work=Associated Press] a radically improved Brown Trafton actually came to Beijing with a reasonable possibility of winning. She had executed the second-best throw posted in the sport in 2008.cite news|accessdate=2008-08-19
url= http://www.iaaf.org/oly08/results/eventCode=3659/racedate=08-18-2008/sex=W/discCode=DT/combCode=hash/roundCode=f/startlist.html#det |title=IAAF Beijing 2008 Startlist
author=International Association of Athletics Federations
date=August 18, 2008
work=iaaf.org] In reality, Brown Trafton had posted the [http://www.usatf.org/news/view.aspx?DUID=USATF_2008_08_06_14_03_47 third best throw of 2008] , and Grasu, the second. But Darya Pischalnikova's [http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/biographies/country=RUS/athcode=184232/index.html 67.28m on 7 June 2008] was clouded by a doping allegation. As of 19 August 2008, it is unclear whether that throw will stand uncontested.] And she had progressively upped her personal best by over 4 m across several meets during the 2008 season. The first of her six throws displayed her progress to her competitors in Beijing. At 64.74 m, it bettered the field by almost two meters.cite news|accessdate=2008-08-19
url= http://www.iaaf.org/oly08/results/eventCode=3659/racedate=08-18-2008/sex=W/discCode=DT/combCode=hash/roundCode=f/results.html#det |title=IAAF Beijing 2008 Results
author=International Association of Athletics Federations
date=August 18, 2008
work=iaaf.org] She threw into the net on her second and third throws,cite news|accessdate=2008-08-19
url=http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/display_article.php?id=25214 |title=Historic gold for Brown Trafton
author=USATF
date=August 18, 2008
work=USATF News] then posted a 58.39 and a 61.30. By the sixth round, it was unnecessary for her to throw to win the gold medal, as the two remaining competitors had not bettered her initial mark. In the end, no one got within a meter of her first throw.

An American breakthrough

On a personal level, her victory in Beijing was the culmination of a number of months of steady improvement for the athlete, after years of steady progress but none the less inconsistent throws above the 60 m mark.cite news|accessdate=2008-08-19
url= http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/biographies/country=USA/athcode=183032/index.html |title=IAAF biography on Stephanie Brown Tranton
author=International Association of Athletics Federations
date=August 18, 2008
work=iaaf.org] It was also the United States' first track and field gold medal of the 2008 Olympics, after a few initial days of failure. But Brown Trafton's gold medal in Beijing was more broadly notable for being the first American gold in the event for 76 years.cite web|accessdate=2008-08-18
url=http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/trackandfield/news/story?id=3540464
title=Brown Trafton of U.S. wins women's discus; Cuban runner-up
publisher=ESPN.com] It was only the second American medal in women's discus at a fully-attended Olympiad, along with Lillian Copeland's silver medal at the 1928 Games in Amsterdam.

It was the second American gold in the event, after Copeland's gold at the Depression-handicapped 1932 Summer Olympics.cite web|accessdate=2008-08-18
url=http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/track_field/news;_ylt=AoDTeaDCnlIRhZw88HNKvumde5p4?slug=jo-browntrafton081808&prov=yhoo&type=lgnsl
title=U.S. hopes hatch from 'golden egg'
author=Peter, Josh
date=2008-08-18
publisher=Yahoo! Sports] It was the fourth medal in American history, behind Leslie Deniz' silver won at the politically-boycotted 1984 Summer Olympics. Additionally, it was the first American medal in the sport won outside the city of Los Angeles since Copeland's silver medal in Amsterdam.

Global perspective

Despite the significance of the victory to the US Track and Field program, Brown Trafton's winning distance of 64.74 m caused one track and field reporter to label Beijing a "low-standard competition". It wasn't a personal best for the athlete.cite web|accessdate=2008-08-18
url= http://www.usatf.org/news/view.aspx?DUID=USATF_2008_08_18_08_38_35
title=Historic gold for Brown Trafton
author=Geer, Jill
date=2008-08-18
publisher=USATF] Nor was it an Olympic record, as Copeland's gold had been in 1932. [ [http://www.usatf.org/halloffame/TF/showBio.asp?HOFIDs=34 USATF biography of Lillian Copeland] And it failed to approach Gabriele Reinsch's 1988 world record of 76.80 m. In fact, not only was Leslie Deniz' 24-year-old silver medal-winning throw longer than any throw of the 2008 Olympics, but no gold medalist since Lia Manoliu in the 1968 games had posted a shorter winning distance.cite web|accessdate=2008-08-19
url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/19/SPP012D6GU.DTL
title=US women's 1st discus gold since '32
author=Crumpacker, John
date=2008-08-19
publisher=San Francisco Chronicle] Only 2 of the 12 finalists at the Beijing Olympics had a personal best "under" Brown Trafton's winning throw, and the average personal best of the field was 66.75 m. However, she was peaking when most of the field was in personal decline. When viewed against the prism of 2008-only performances, the only members of the field "other" than Brown Trafton to better the winning 64.74 m mark were Aretha Thurmond, Nicoleta Grasu and Yarelis Barrios. In fact, only six women other than Brown Trafton had thrown better in 2008, and they weren't all present in Beijing. rquote|right|I know that by far this meet was not in the top five this year as far as competitiveness.|on the quality of the meetMatters weren't helped, as one commentator noted, by the Beijing weather. The windless, humid conditions on the evening of the competition were hardly ideal for discus throwing. And maybe, as Brown Trafton herself remarked, the competition was "a little more open" thanks to the banning of the prohibitive favorite, Russian Darya Pishchalnikova, for suspicion of doping.cite web|accessdate=2008-08-18
url=http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/olympics_blog/2008/08/us-wins-womens.html
title=US wins women's discus; world record for pole vaulter Yelena Isinbaeva
author=Hersh, Philip
date=2008-08-18
publisher=Los Angeles Times]

Impact on personal life

Unlike many 21st century American Olympians, Brown Trafton had a day job as she prepared for the Beijing Games. Using skills rooted in her undergraduate degree from Cal Poly, she worked as a computer-assisted designer for an environmental consulting firm in Sacramento, California called [http://www.SycamoreEnvironmental.com Sycamore Environmental Consultants, Inc.]

She and her husband are both recreational hunters. She quipped to reporters that the downside of the Beijing Olympics was that they occurred just as hunting season opened in California.cite news|accessdate=2008-08-18
url=http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/trackandfield/columns/story?columnist=cyphers_luke&id=3541231|title=Brown Trafton, Taylor spur sluggish American track team
author=Cypers, Luke
date=August 18, 2008
work=ESPN The Magazine] cite web|accessdate=2008-08-19
url= http://www.latimes.com/sports/olympics/la-sp-elliott19-2008aug19,0,7831140.column
title=Stephanie Brown Trafton ends U.S. gold drought in discus
author=Eliott, Helene
date=2008-08-19
work=Los Angeles Times]

2012 Olympics

Brown Trafton confirmed her intention to compete in the 2012 Summer Olympics immediately after winning in Beijing. Noting the difficulties her sport has had with doping, she set a personal goal for the future of being "the first world-record holder that's a clean world record".

References

Persondata
NAME = Trafton, Stephanie Brown
ALTERNATIVE NAMES = Brown, Stephanie
SHORT DESCRIPTION = Discus thrower
DATE OF BIRTH = December 1, 1979
PLACE OF BIRTH = San Luis Obispo, California
DATE OF DEATH =
PLACE OF DEATH =