Topic: News: Melanie Roach training for 2008 Olympics

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Finding Inner Strength
By Greg Bishop

SUMNER, Wash. — Melanie Roach is a former gymnast who owns a gymnastics facility. Her husband is a state legislator. At 33, she is the mother of three young children, including 5-year-old Drew, who is autistic. And she can lift 238 pounds over her head.

All of which makes her one of America’s most unlikely Olympic hopefuls.

For a start, Roach, who is 5 feet 1 inch and 117 pounds, looks nothing like a weight lifter. She was a gymnast until 10 years ago, when she left behind a middling career, took up weight lifting and in 1998 set an unofficial world record by lifting twice her body weight, a first for an American woman.

But she hyperextended her right elbow four months before the world championships in 1999 and had a herniated disk in her back eight weeks before the Olympic trials in 2000. She attempted to compete despite the injury, only to end up crying in the stands.

The back injury bothered her for seven years — through three pregnancies and three times as many comeback attempts.

“She rose to greatness so quickly, and then all of a sudden it was over,” said Roach’s training partner Alexis Reed. “You almost asked yourself, a year or two later, ‘Did that really happen?’ ”

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Roach with her chiropractor, Greg Summers; her coach, John Thrush; and her teammate Rachel Churchward.

The problems she encountered in competition were nothing compared with the challenge she confronted with Drew after his autism was diagnosed in 2005. Roach said she was preoccupied with everything he would never be able to do — school dances, church missions, college classes. He did not have bad days; he had bad weeks, bad months, filled with relentless tantrums.

“It was literally in a week my life changed,” Roach said. “I went into depression. I went through a mourning process. Almost like I lost a child.”

She said she would kneel at his bedside every night, praying he would get better.

In December 2005, Roach, a Mormon, went to see her bishop. “This is not what I signed up for,” she said.

“This is exactly what you signed up for,” he replied. That message not only changed her outlook about Drew, it changed her outlook about weight lifting.

“She learned that no matter how much money and time she put into it, she couldn’t change the outcome,” said her husband, Dan. “That has really helped with lifting. In the end, it’s the same concept.”

The family spent $25,000 on specialized therapy for Drew, and he has shown improvement. The family developed routines and safeguards. Every door, pantry and bedroom in their house is locked, even from the inside. They cut gluten from his diet, calming his demeanor and increasing his comprehension.

They do not watch television in the morning, so Drew can get ready for school without distraction. From 1 a.m. to 4 a.m., Dan takes care of Drew, when he often throws what the family calls parties, jumping on the bed, opening and shutting the bedroom door 20 times, breaking into fits of giggles.

“Still, Drew isn’t able to come up and tell me how his day is,” Roach said. “There will always be a part of him I cannot get to.”

Each morning when Drew boards the bus, Roach looks him in the eye and says goodbye. She makes eye contact and says, “I’m waiting.” “I love you,” Drew says back.

As much as Drew helped his mother learn to enjoy weight lifting, the constant movement of the complex family helps him, too. Drew used to throw fits when confronted with new environments, like when they turned left at a certain stoplight instead of right toward his grandmother’s house.

But autism is a challenge they will always confront, long after the Olympics. While cleaning out Dan’s office last month, Drew lay on the ground. “No tantrums,” his mother said firmly.

“No tantrums! No tantrums!” Drew screamed.

“Drew’s disability grounds them for life with other people who have challenges that are insurmountable,” Dan’s mother, Pam Roach, said. “You can’t surmount autism. You can learn to live with it.”

Roach trains for the Olympics in her gymnastics facility, a converted day-care center now filled with a symphony of barbell clangs and grunts. She made the transition from gymnastics into weight lifting in quick fashion. Guided by a coach, John Thrush, who trained elite prospects in his garage, Roach, then Melanie Kosoff, won her first national championship in 1997.

She met Dan in September 1998, and they married six months later. During the courtship, they traveled to Finland for the world championships. Melanie needed to complete one lift for a bronze medal, but “bombed out” on the platform, the pressure of meeting expectations heavier than the weight itself. After she lost, Dan told her that he lost his first election by 300 votes, or one-half of 1 percent.

On the streets of Finland, they wondered where everything went wrong. “And it didn’t get better, unfortunately,” Melanie said. “That was the beginning of the snowball effect.”

The first comeback, in 2003, lasted seven months before the back pain returned. She describes it as “way past 10,” worse than childbirth, and she notes she had her three kids naturally, at home.

“The best way to put it is as volatile as you can imagine,” said Greg Summers, Roach’s chiropractor. “I see four to five herniated disks a week, and hers is the worst I have ever seen.”

During long evenings Roach spent icing in the bathtub, she and Dan talked often about retiring for good. Even when she returned to the national team, she considered giving up her spot.

Unable to stand up straight, spending days at a time in bed, she called Summers in desperation.

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Roach with her son Drew, 5, who is autistic and receives specialized therapy. “There will always be a part of him I cannot get to,” she said.

Other doctors told her she risked serious injury, said that she could end up in a wheelchair. “Most orthopedic surgeons would cringe at the fact she was doing anything, let alone weight lifting,” Summers said.

At the world championships in October 2006, Roach finally told the team doctor about the herniated disk and three fragments imbedded in the nerve. The doctor recommended a surgeon in Los Angeles.

Five days after surgery, Roach was lifting weights without bending her back. Seven months later, she won her seventh national championship.

She later won a bronze medal at the Pan American Games and regained her No. 1 ranking among United States lifters.

“Amazing,” Dan Roach said. “We literally went from the world championships to the operating table and back in less than a year.”

But when would Melanie Roach enjoy it?

Back in the gym, with a poster from the Finland flameout and a Beijing T-shirt hanging from the wall, Roach lifted bars bent with colored plates while the song “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie blasted through her earphones.

“Weight lifting is the easiest part of my day,” she said.

Thrush can tell immediately how well Roach is balancing the complexities of her life. He said he knew Roach was struggling with the pressure at the national championships in March, when she successfully lifted only two of six attempts. To qualify for Beijing, she must finish fourth or better in the 53-kilogram weight class at the Olympic trials in Atlanta on May 17.

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The family has developed routines and safeguards for Drew.

“You’ll have an opportunity to be an average, everyday woman after August,” Thrush said he tells Roach when she seems distracted. “You need to be selfish now.”

Team Roach marches on through a life that Dan Roach described as “organized chaos.” Bonnie Kosoff, Melanie’s mother, moved in recently to take care of the children. Summers and Thrush travel to events.

“You know how they say it takes a village to raise a child?” Kosoff said. “Well, it takes a village to get someone to the Olympics, too.”

The changed outlook remains. Had Roach gone to the Olympics in 2000, she said, she would not have three kids or the business. Had there been no Drew, she may never have learned what Thrush tried to teach her all along — the concept of slow and small but steady and incremental progress.

But the biggest change that Drew inspired was in Roach, the athlete. She now enjoys the Olympic quest, 14 years after it started.

Summers, the chiropractor, said he first noticed the difference at an airport recently. Roach had been stopped by security and told she could not proceed with the fingernail polish in her carry-on. She stopped, smiled, propped up her feet and applied a fresh coat.

[Roman Hunt]

What a great inspiration and truly stellar woman!

[Shaun Le Conte]

She looks exceptionally fit in the top photo. I hope she makes the Olympic team.

[Jim Hooper]

Funny the article says she "looks nothing like a weightlifter."  She looks precisely like a weightlifter.  Great story, thanks for posting.  10 days to Atlanta.

[igorheren]

True hero!

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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On road to Olympic dream despite special-needs child & personal injury

Melanie Roach is a former gymnast who owns a gymnastics facility. Her husband is a state legislator. At 33, she is the mother of three young children, including 5-year-old Drew, who is autistic. And she can lift 238 pounds over her head.

All of which makes her one of America’s most unlikely Olympic hopefuls.

For a start, Roach, who is 5 feet 1 and 117 pounds, looks nothing like a weightlifter. The Bonney Lake, Wash., resident was a gymnast until 10 years ago, when she left behind a middling career, took up weightlifting and in 1998 set an unofficial world record by lifting twice her body weight, a first for an American woman.

But she hyperextended her right elbow four months before the world championships in 1999 and herniated a disk in her back eight weeks before the Olympic trials in 2000. She attempted to compete despite the injury, only to end up crying in the stands.

The back injury bothered her for seven years — through three pregnancies and three times as many comeback attempts.

“She rose to greatness so quickly, and then all of a sudden it was over,” said Roach’s training partner Alexis Reed. “You almost asked yourself, a year or two later, ‘Did that really happen?’ ”

The problems she encountered in competition were nothing compared with the challenge she confronted with Drew after his autism was diagnosed in 2005. She said she would kneel at his bedside every night, praying he would get better.

In December 2005, Roach, a Mormon, went to see her bishop.

“This is not what I signed up for,” she said.

“This is exactly what you signed up for,” he replied. That message not only changed her outlook about Drew, it changed her outlook about weightlifting.

[attachimg=1]

The family spent $25,000 on specialized therapy for Drew, and he has shown improvement. The family developed routines and safeguards. For example, every door, pantry and bedroom in their house is locked, even from the inside.

On a physical level, the turning point for Roach was at the world championships in October 2006. She finally told the team doctor about the herniated disk, and he recommended a surgeon in Los Angeles. Seven months later, she won her seventh national championship.

She later won a bronze medal at the Pan American Games and regained her No. 1 ranking among U.S. lifters.

Now, in order to qualify for Beijing, she must finish fourth or better in the 53-kilogram weight class at the Olympic trials May 17 in Atlanta.

Team Roach marches on through a life that her husband, Dan Roach, described as “organized chaos.” Bonnie Kosoff, her mother, moved in recently to take care of the children.

“You know how they say it takes a village to raise a child?” Kosoff said. “Well, it takes a village to get someone to the Olympics, too.”

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Melanie Roach shows strength on and off platform

"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well." -- Olympic creed, by Pierre de Coubertin.

BONNEY LAKE, Wash. -- The front of Melanie Roach's refrigerator looks like millions of others across America:

A drawing in crayon that her oldest son Ethan did, with "To: Mom" in bold letters, and another masterpiece in what looks like fingerpaint. Pictures of family and friends, pizza coupons, magnets with the Beijing Olympic mascots on them.

And, next to Ethan's drawing, three photos of Melanie from the 2007 U.S. weightlifting championships, where she won a national title just seven months after career-threatening back surgery.

"It's not a big deal, it's really not," she insists. "I still put my pants on one leg at a time. I'm still a mom. I'm still a business owner. I'm still a wife."

And one of the best female weightlifters in the world -- an eight-time U.S. champion who can finally claim a place at the Olympics at next week's trials in Atlanta.

One hundred years after Pierre de Coubertin adopted that Olympic creed, this 5-foot-1, 33-year-old mother with cover-girl looks and three children, one of whom is autistic, is the perfect embodiment of it.

For Roach's story illustrates the struggle of sport and life -- challenges and perseverance, disappointments and triumph, tears and celebration.

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Had Roach made the Olympic team in 2000, had she not herniated a disc in her back eight weeks before the trials, who knows where her journey might have led? She might not have the family she does now, or the gymnastics gym she and her husband own.

But "what ifs" are a waste of time. Everything really does happen for a reason, Roach said, the bumps and the blessings.

"At the end of the day, it's so much more than competing in the Olympics," Roach said. "It's about the journey and relationships and being able to persevere through trials. Looking inside yourself and finding what motivates you."

For Roach, that's family first, Olympic dream second.

Or maybe they're so entwined it's impossible to separate the two.

It was just four weeks after Camille, her third child, was born in 2005 that Roach decided to make a comeback. But it wasn't as simple as going back to the gym. She and husband Dan had, by any measure, a full life. Dan is a state representative, making the 90-minute trip back and forth to Olympia, Wash., each day when the legislature was in session. Melanie ran their business, Roach Gymnastics, a gym with 500 students and 17 employees. They are deeply involved in their church, too, with Melanie teaching Sunday school and Dan serving as Sunday school president.

But something was missing, and they both knew it.

"Not making it in 2000 just killed her," Dan said. "It was important to her to have that closure."

Added Melanie, "It's like having a lick of a lollipop but not being able to bring it home."

So they have found a way to make it work. The entire family.

Last weekend, Dan played with the kids at home while Melanie trained. There was a local weightlifting meet that doubled as a fundraiser at the gym afterward, so she stuck around and was soon joined by the rest of the family. Melanie was getting a post-workout massage when Dan and the kids arrived, and Camille and Drew quickly climbed on top of her.

When it came time for Melanie to give a short speech about autism, 3-year-old Camille and 7-year-old Ethan ran to stand at her side. Five-year-old Drew, who is autistic, came out with Dan to complete the family portrait.

"With the support group she has, they're able to do it. But it's still a lot," said Bonnie Kosoff, Melanie's mother, who lives with the family Monday to Thursday to help out.

Melanie and Dan's planners are both so jam-packed you can barely see the white of the page. A recent morning at their house was a nonstop buzz of activity.

After Melanie got Drew ready for school, she handed him off to Dan. While Dan took Drew to the bus, Melanie went over Ethan's spelling homework with him. Dan went back on bus patrol with Ethan, taking Camille with him so Melanie could get ready for appointments with her chiropractor and nutritionist, and pack for a photo shoot later that afternoon.

The strangest thing? All of this has made Melanie a better athlete.

"You learn not to sweat the small stuff, and I think that's transferred to weightlifting," she said. "(In 2000) I was a little immature in terms of experience, in terms of distractions. I was so caught up in the end result."

All that changed in May 2005 when they got a devastating diagnosis -- Drew, then 2, was autistic.

Autism is a neurobiological disorder that impairs a person's ability to communicate and relate to others. Though therapy can help those with autism, there is no cure. That was the realization that cut the Roaches the deepest. This sweet-faced little boy with the big brown eyes might never reach milestones that other children -- even some other special-needs children -- do. Drew might never graduate high school. He might never go on a mission. He might never marry.

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At one point, Melanie was so despondent she went to their bishop for guidance.

"I was basically complaining. 'This isn't what I signed up for," Melanie said. "He basically looked at me and said, 'Yes, you did sign up for this. This is exactly what you signed up for.' ... That was a huge turning point for me. I started letting go of trying to make Drew better and started enjoying him for who he is.

"I still hope for a miracle," she added. "But I don't dwell on it."

Drew can now ask for certain foods or movies he likes, and will say "hello" or "goodbye" or "I love you" when prompted. He's in a full-time kindergarten where he gets individualized attention, and will play with his brother and sister for brief periods.

But he still needs to be monitored 24 hours a day. Every door and cabinet in the Roach house must be locked with a key so Drew can't get in -- or, more important, out -- if someone isn't watching. When they go somewhere, it's with the knowledge they might have to leave immediately if Drew has a tantrum.

It is a daily challenge, for sure, but never a burden.

Melanie and Dan met in 1998, in the most random of fashions. The son of a longtime state senator, Dan was running for state representative and called a family friend to talk about the campaign. Melanie happened to be housesitting, and answered the phone.

"She told me she was a weightlifter, but she had this real sweet voice," Dan said. "I was kind of intrigued, and we kept talking."

After about 10 minutes, they hung up. But the next day, as Dan was standing alongside a road holding up a campaign sign, he noticed a woman in a passing car slow down and stare at him.

"The construction workers in the truck behind her were like, 'That girl's checking you out," Dan said, smiling.

He wondered if it might be that same woman he'd talked to on the phone the day before. Sure enough, it was. She pulled off the road and introduced herself. They were married the following year, and have been supporting each other's dreams ever since.

"We start with taking care of our relationship," Dan said. "Putting limits on yourself, you don't have to. The sky is the limit. But before you go out and chase that dream, make sure you have a strong foundation."

When Melanie and Dan go to meet Ethan at the bus stop, they walk hand-in-hand. They don't leave the house or end a phone call without saying "I love you." They have a date night each week. For Mother's Day, Dan plans to let Melanie sleep in and prepare a special breakfast when she wakes up. And, of course, Ethan, Camille and Drew will be his helpers.

They engage Drew as they do Ethan and Camille, asking if he wants to go for a swing when the family is in the backyard after school or telling him to get up off the floor. When Dan starts to chase after Drew after spending the morning with the kids so Melanie could train, she stops him and says, "That's OK, honey, it's my turn."

That selflessness has rubbed off on the rest of their family. When an older child refers to Drew as "that kid," Ethan quickly pointed out that "His name is Drew."

"When you put a little boy with autism in this hand, an Olympic dream gone bad in the other, that Olympic dream thing doesn't seem so big," Melanie Roach said. "I would be happy to trade the Olympic dream to have my son back."

But she knows that will not happen.

Growing up, Roach dreamed of going to the Olympics. Only in her dream, she was wearing a leotard and doing handsprings and back tucks on the balance beam, not lifting weights that would make most grown men buckle.

It wasn't until she'd finished high school and was looking for a way to get in better shape while she juggled college and a budding coaching career that she even tried weightlifting.

She was instantly hooked.

"It gets in your blood, and it never leaves," she said. "It's a natural sport for me. It's like it was made for me to do it."

Say weightlifting, and most people think of muscle-bound gym rats who boast of bench pressing a couple hundred pounds. But Olympic-style weightlifting is far different -- the quickest way to irritate a lifter is to ask how much she can bench press -- and is as much about flexibility, speed and coordination as it is strength and power.

As for those physical stereotypes, one look at Roach shatters those. Caramel-colored highlights peek out from her dark hair, cut in a fashionable bob. A fresh coat of red nail polish shines through the white chalk dust on her hands as she trains, and the stones in her silver hoop earrings sparkle when they catch the light. A pink plastic Strawberry Shortcake lunch bag is tucked between her backpack and gear bag.

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And just like in her gymnastics days, her makeup is perfectly done when she steps on the competition platform.

"I'm a girlie girl, I can't help it. That's who I am," she said.

As a former gymnast, Roach was a natural at weightlifting. Three months after she started lifting, she qualified for her first national event, where she took third in her weight class.

"I've seen a lot of people with that kind of potential. But potential is like a bag of gold that's buried in the woods. You've got to find it," said John Thrush, Roach's one and only coach since she began lifting in April 1994.

"Potential has to be backed up by a whole lot of work."

By 1998, Roach was the top weightlifter in the United States. She set a world record in the 53-kilogram class (117 pounds) with a 113-kilogram lift (250 pounds) in the clean and jerk, and was the first American woman to lift double her body weight.

She was all but guaranteed a spot at the Sydney Olympics. But eight weeks before the trials, she heard a "Pop! Pop!" as she did a squat and felt a twinge in her lower back. She had herniated a disc.

She went to the Olympic trials anyway, and tried to lift in the snatch portion. But the pain was too great, and she withdrew. She spent the rest of the competition in the stands, crying as she watched other women win her spot at the Sydney Games.

"It's a classic case of missing the golden ring. It's right there within your grasp and you can't reach that far," Thrush said. "Overnight, it was just gone and nothing could be done at that point. There was no time left to fix anything."

Even when she wasn't lifting, her back problems lingered. And eight months into her comeback, the pain returned with fearsome intensity. Tests showed fragments of that herniated disc had broken off, and that excruciating pain was the shards digging into her nerves.

Her old massage therapist, Greg Summers, was now a chiropractor, and it was only by working with him that she was able to keep training. Still, she'd go five or six weeks, then have to take two off to let the pain subside.

She managed to train enough to win another national title -- her sixth -- in 2006 and make the world team. Finally, at the world championships, she asked a USA Weightlifting doctor if there was anything that could be done for her back.

There was, in fact, a new procedure called microdiscectomy that could help. Instead of cutting through muscle to remove the bone fragments, doctors could now pinch them to the side and work around them, reducing the recovery time. Though there was no guarantee the surgery would help, the Roaches decided it was worth the risk.

She flew to Los Angeles on a Sunday at the end of October 2006, and had the surgery Monday. On Tuesday, she was on a plane back home. The pain that had practically immobilized her was gone. She was back in the gym five days later, and doing Olympic lifts eight weeks after that.

Seven months later, she lifted a total of 184 kilograms (406 pounds) at the U.S. championships, her best result in nine years. In July 2007, she won a bronze medal at the Pan American Games.

Though she didn't have her greatest meet at the U.S. championships on Feb. 29, her total of 183 kilograms was enough to win her weight class and qualify for one of the four Olympic berths. She still must compete at the Olympic trials next weekend but, barring another disaster, she will be on her way to Beijing in August.

After eight years, and a lifetime's worth of tests and triumphs, her journey finally will be complete.

"My story isn't really about me," she said. "It's about a group of people that came together to try and make this Olympic dream happen. Everyone struggles. Everyone has challenges. No one is perfect. It's about how you handle it."

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Amazing Moms

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, my mom said I should pay tribute to ‘amazing moms.’ And I always do what mom says - honest.

What makes my mom so amazing is that she raised three boys in rural Wisconsin - and she survived. My mom spent a lot of time tending to cuts, bruises, scrapes and even broken bones. When she wasn’t doing first aid, she was administering maternal justice and, when necessary, corporal punishment.

My mom is so strong - well, she’s stronger than your dad. And she’ll probably prove it by outliving her three sons.

Now, we all know that the body gets stronger by adapting to new challenges imposed on the organism. That clearly explains why Melanie Roach is so darn strong - physically, mentally and emotionally. Definitely an amazing mom.

Melanie’s life has been a roller coaster ride of highs and lows.

Melanie Roach was a garden-variety gymnast that took up Olympic weight lifting. In 1998, at the US National Championships, she shocked the world by being the first American to ‘clean & jerk’ more than twice her body weight.

At the 1999 World Championships, she ‘bombed’ her final lift and missed the bronze medal, and at the 2000 Olympic Trials, a recurring back problem surfaced to haunt her.

For seven years, she trained and competed with a herniated disc, had three children and in her spare time operated Roach Gymnastics, teaching 500 little gymnasts.

In 2005, Melanie and husband Dan were faced with a new challenge when their son was diagnosed with autism. In 2006, the herniated disc became unbearable and surgery was recommended - training and competing was out of the question.

Orthopedic surgeons know nothing about ‘amazing moms.’ Melanie was weight training five days after surgery and just seven months later captured her seventh national title. She then went on to win the bronze medal at the Pan Am Games.

This Mother’s Day, Melanie Roach will probably do what she does every Sunday - teach Sunday school.

And on May 17 she will be competing at the Olympic Trials in Atlanta for a berth on the US team.

Amazing mom? You betcha!

American Idol? Absolutely.

Check her out at www.melanieroach.com.