In 2000 Stacey Dragilia, proud Idaho State Alum, went to Sydney, Australia and in the first ever women’s pole-vaulting competition in Olympic Games history took home the gold medal for the United States. This week, Stacey was kind enough to give some of her time to join Aaron and Dahl during the First Bank of Wyoming Sports Friday to talk about her gold medal career in pole-vault and to discuss her involvement in the upcoming Simplot games.
The Simplot games will be hosted at Idaho State as they always are and Stacey says that her involvement in the games started when she was still a student athlete and was able to get an up-close glimpse at the games while they were being set up on campus. These days Dragilia helps coach the next generation of great track and field athletes at the high school level and this plays into her anticipation for the games every year as she states it always feels like at any given time she looks for a new record to be broken by the incredible athletes that the games continue to draw out every year.
A few of Dragilia’s own students have even gone on to rise through her program to the collegiate and then the world stage as Olympians in their own right as Stacey talks about during the interview but those aren’t the only competitors she is excited to watch every year. Dragilia goes on to talk about how some of the athletes you get to watch compete may very well not be going on to continue their athletic career at the next level and are competing in their final season as student-athletes and they bring just as much fire as the rest of the field and the sheer level of competition on display is just a ton of fun for any sports fan.
The build up to the 2000 games was also quite the story as Dragilia goes into detail about, as initially it was only announced to be an exhibition event with no medals being awarded to simply test the water for how the response would be to women’s pole-vaulting. However that all changed as Emma George of hometown Australia was projected to finish highly as it was her record that Stacey Dragilia actually broke for pole-vault heading into the Olympic Games so Australia changed their minds and changed the event to a medal event in an attempt to get some hometown representation on the podiums during the games (although as it would turn out, George would not end up taking a top 3 spot after all was said and done).
The 43rd Simplot games will take place next week from Feb 16th-18th at Idaho State University and Stacey Dragilia and many of her students will be in attendance and competing in the games and you can catch the full interview below:
