Topic: News: Melanie Roach training for 2008 Olympics

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Family life keeps weightlifter Roach busy
By Steve Ginsburg

WASHINGTON, July 23 (Reuters) - American Olympic weightlifter Melanie Roach recalls the desperation she felt after being told her son was autistic. "There was a long time that I was really sad and really depressed after his diagnosis," she said. "You really mourn the loss of a child when they're diagnosed with autism. "You realize that all the expectations that you had for your child may not necessarily happen. "He might not graduate from high school. He might not ever have a date with a girl. He might not go to school dances, or go to college. It can be tough."

Roach, 33, is accustomed to overcoming obstacles, whether it is the stress caused by missing the 2000 Sydney Games with a back injury or the anxiety caused by chasing an Olympic dream with three children and a thriving gymnastics business. "I really live in the moment when it comes to weightlifting," she told reporters at a gathering of Olympians in Chicago. "I don't look in the future, I don't worry about what the next competition is going to be. "I just focus on the now. It hasn't been easy though."

SCHOOL BUS

The diminutive former gymnast heads to the Beijing Games next month as the number one-ranked U.S. weightlifter. She said having weightlifting as merely one facet of her life gave her an advantage over most of her competition. "Being older makes me a better athlete," she said. "I'm better at going from one task to the next.

"I spend my day preparing the kids for the school bus, making sure we have dinner, getting the kids off the bus and making sure their homework is done. "Then when I get to go to the gym, I get to breathe. It's like a moment to myself, something that most moms don't get. It's a great balance. I wish more women had the chance."

Following her injury just weeks before the U.S. Olympic trials in 2000, Roach took five years off to start a family and launch her successful gymnastics school near Seattle. The five-foot-one-inch (1.55-metre), seven-times national champion returned to the sport at the age of 30, when most Olympic athletes are looking at their careers in the rear-view mirror. "I always knew I'd go back," said Roach. "I tried after our second child was born but the back pain returned. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment because I decided to come back again." "I look at it like this. If I made the Olympic team in 2000, I wouldn't have the three kids that I have now. Everything happens for a reason."

LAST DANCE

The layoff does not appear to have hurt Roach, a former world-record holder who had successful surgery for a herniated disc in 2006. She will compete in the 53 kg (117-pound) event in Beijing. At the U.S. trials, Roach lifted 81 kilos in the snatch, a personal best in competition, and 109 kilos in the clean and jerk. It was her best effort since 1998.

With her children and a husband who is a member of the Washington state legislature, Roach is always on the run. "I'm with these younger athletes and they're all exhausted from traveling, always saying how tired they are," she said. "This is a vacation for me.

"I'm not chasing three little kids, making sure the house in clean or worrying about the business. The list is endless. I learn to enjoy every moment as a weightlifter. "I know it's going to be over soon. This is my last dance. I'm so lucky to have a second chance. This is an exciting time for me."

When the Olympics are over, the public spotlight will go out for Roach. Her goals will shift as she will look for incremental improvements for six-year-old Drew, her autistic son. "I used to worry about what Drew wasn't going to do in life," she said. "Now I just enjoy who he is. It's helped me in weightlifting. "I've learned through watching my son that you just enjoy what's here today."

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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In a solitary sport, this Olympian is not alone

U.S. Olympian Melanie Roach will step alone onto the world sports stage Aug. 10 in Beijing. She will bend down to grasp a steel barbell holding more than twice her 117-pound weight and try to lift as much as she can. Breaking her own long-standing American record of 250 pounds in the clean and jerk would be great. Earning an Olympic medal would be over the top.

But no one knows better than the 33-year-old Bonney Lake mother of three that her triumphs so far are not hers alone. She knows she wouldn’t be an Olympian without her support network.

A farewell rally last Friday at her Roach Gymnastics Center in Sumner drew more than 150 people. She struggled not to break down as she lauded “Team Roach” and marveled that she was standing in front of this crowd.

“If anyone had told me eight years ago,” she said, “I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Roach leaves for Beijing Friday, a trip that will be easy compared to her long journey to these Games: a back injury that cost her a spot at the 2000 Olympics; the birth of her son Drew, whose autism brought her to her knees; a failed, injury-plagued try for the 2004 Olympics; and back surgery that offered hope but no guarantees.

But she also had a husband who understood her pursuit; a mother who sacrificed time for her daughter; a coach who never gave up on her; and children including Drew, who taught her how to be a champion.

One day in Auburn in late 1998, Melanie Kozoff went out of her way to meet Dan Roach. They had talked once on the phone but had never met.

She saw him on a street corner waving his campaign sign at passing motorists. It was his first bid to become a 31st District state representative. She was a rising weight-lifting star heading for the World Championships in Finland.

She parked her car, walked over and introduced herself.

It turned out not be a year of great success for either of them. She did poorly in the Worlds; he lost the election.

“It helped us prepare for other trials,” she said.

Less than six months later, they were married.

Today they live in a Sky Island house perched on the lip of the Bonney Lake plateau with a sweeping view of the Sumner Valley and west to Tacoma.

Dan is campaigning for his fourth term in the Legislature. Melanie is an Olympian heading for the greatest moment in her sports life.

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Leonard Harison (CQ), a competitive lifter at Thrush Sports Performance Center in Sumner, watches soon to be Olympian Melanie Roach, during a grueling workout recently. Roach hopes to break her won long standing women's American record of 250 lbs. in the clean and jerk and maybe earn a Olympic medal. Photo By Dean J. Koepfler.

On a recent Tuesday, she was helping Dan and her mother Bonnie Kozoff prepare lunch. The children, Ethan, 7, Drew, 5, and Cami, 3, waited for sandwiches at the dining room table. Their young cousin from Tacoma was spending the day.

Melanie calls their household “controlled chaos.”

She constantly makes lists and schedules. It isn’t easy juggling being the wife of a politician, overseeing gymnastics programs for 250 youth, training almost daily for the Olympics and mothering three children.

Dan said the secret is melding all their activities together.

“One feeds off the other,” he said. “We live a hectic life anyway.”

So last week’s rally promoted the gymnastics enter at its new location, raised funds to send Team Roach to the Olympics, served as a Republican campaign event for Dan and raised money for Autism Speaks, a national autism advocacy organization that Melanie volunteers for.

Ethan, who will accompany his dad to Beijing to see his mom compete, is a big fan.

But he admits there’s a slight downside to all the hard work of the past three years. “Every day it’s kind of hard on me,” he said. “I have to look after my autistic brother and my sister.”

Like his mom, he said he can handle it.

Bonnie Kozoff was the first Team Roach member. She used to drive her daughter an hour each way to four-hour gymnastic classes when they lived in Dallas, Ore.

She remembers 12-year-old Melanie telling everyone in the family that she would compete on the Olympic gymnastics team. No one really doubted her, she said.

In 2003, when Roach announced she was going to try again for the Olympic weightlifting team, Kozoff retired early from her job working with developmentally disabled children for the State of Utah.

She moved into the Roaches’ house fulltime. She is still there four days a week.

Roach credits her mother with giving her the determination to keep going.

Another influential figure in Roach’s life is coach John Thrush of Lake Tapps, who was twice an Olympic weightlifting hopeful himself. She met him 14 years ago.

“I told John I just wanted to get in shape,” she said.

“We’ll see,” he said.

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Melanie Roach 33 year old Olympic weightlifter and mother of three from Bonney Lake says she is in the best shape of her life. Photo by Dean J. Koepfler.

On a recent Tuesday night, Thrush, 63, scanned the athletes -- men and women, young and not so young -- working out in his new Olympic weight-lifting facility. It is next door to the new Roach Gymnastic Center, in a warehouse at 1627 45th St. East in Sumner.

He had eyes for everyone there, but especially Roach. She is his first Olympian.

The soft-spoken coach admits he’s like a proud father.

“I always felt she had unfinished business,” he said.

He was with her at the high and low points in the sport. Her back betrayed her at the trials for the 2000 Olympics. She had to watch in tears from the stands as her hope died.

Thrush said she was primed for a gold medal. It was the first time women were allowed to compete. The field was thin. Roach owned the record in her weight class.

“The first time you are injured, it’s a defining moment,” he said.

Some athletes fold. Others have the drive to come back, he said.

“Athletes need to be self-absorbed. They need to be selfish,” he said. “She’s come to understand where she came from. It was all taken away from her.”

Thrush will travel with her to China Friday.

“It’s been a long trip, down a long, hard road sometimes,” he told the crowd at the rally. “I hope you can appreciate how hard this is to do.”

A softness comes into Roach’s eyes when she talks about Drew and his autism.

She recalled the Sunday morning in early 2005 when she came downstairs and told Dan she wanted to train for the Olympics a third time. He didn’t blink.

“Let’s do it,” she recalls him saying.

Four weeks earlier, they had welcomed Cami to the family.

Four weeks later, Drew was diagnosed with autism.

“It was awful,” she said, “a most devastating time.”

Roach remembers kneeling by his bed, pondering all the things she thought her middle child wouldn’t be able to do in his life.

She took a leave from her gymnastic center. “We didn’t leave our house for two years.”

She went to their Mormon church bishop and vented about the pains of motherhood.

“I told him that wasn’t what I signed up for,” she said. “He told me that was exactly what I signed up for.”

He told her to focus on what Drew could do.

Today Drew is speaking. He still growls and screeches and has loud “parties” at night where he jumps on his bed for two hours. Sleeplessness is an autistic trait, she explained.

Drew, however, may have been her most important support.

“Having him diagnosed changed my perspective. I appreciate my time in the gym a lot more. I finally let go of the past.

“Drew taught me you don’t have to worry about the future,” Roach said. “You can enjoy the now.”

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Melanie Roach: "SuperMom"
By Brad Townsend

Melanie Roach's Olympic hopes seemed to end, devastatingly, in 2000.

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Weightlifter Melanie Roach learned in November 2005 that her 2-year-old son, Drew, was autistic. "I've learned through watching
my son and his development that you just have to enjoy the moment," she said.

Weeks before that summer's U.S. Olympic weightlifting trials, she herniated a disk in her back. So at 25, she quit weightlifting, helped husband Dan get elected to the Washington State House, opened a gymnastics school and had three children.

Yet in the summer of 2005, she returned to weightlifting and gradually returned to elite status, despite learning in November 2005 that 2-year-old son Drew was autistic.

She says she went through depression and a mourning process after it hit her "that all the hopes and expectations that you had for your child may not happen." A Mormon, she says she entered "acceptance mode" after talking with her church's bishop.

Now 33, the 5-1, 117-pound seven-time national champion in the 53-kilogram (117-pound) weight class is bound to compete in her first Olympics.

"The turning point for me was when I finally stopped worrying about what Drew wasn't going to do, and started to enjoy who he is," she said. "I think that actually helped me in weightlifting, because I really live in a bubble when it comes to weightlifting.

"I don't worry about the future. I don't worry about what the next competition is going to be. I just focus on the now, because I've learned through watching my son and his development that you just have to enjoy the moment."

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Olympic hopeful balances being a mom and lifting weights
By Hal Habib

Eight years ago, Melanie Roach was close enough to her Olympic dream to touch it. An injury caused it to slip out of reach.

Gone forever, it seemed.

Roach carried the weight of that disappointment even as she carried on with her life as a new wife and mother.

Today, having qualified for the Olympics at age 33, Roach carries a different weight.

It's not just the 238 pounds that Roach, who is 5 and half feet tall and 119 pounds, can lift over her head as a national champion weight lifter.

It's also the burden on her shoulders, which actually gets a bit lighter every night when she heads to the gym.

Roach, of Bonney Lake, Wash., has a 5-year-old son, Drew, who is autistic.

Tantrums are a daily part of Drew's life. Her husband, Dan, said Drew can throw spices all over the kitchen floor, rip the stuffing out of cushions and dump a bottle of shampoo on the carpet - all in five minutes. Grudgingly, Melanie and Dan, who also have two other children, have accepted what the experts have told them: Deal with it, because it's not likely to change.

With all that breaking loose at home, it's not difficult to picture Melanie cranking up the Olympic theme for inspiration as she heads out to train.

"It truly is the easiest part of my day," she said. "For most people, they might not enjoy training. I love training."

Roach once was the No. 1 lifter in the U.S., a favorite to qualify for the 2000 Sydney Games. A herniated disk weeks before the trials appeared to end her career.

But after undergoing back surgery in 2006, she has produced an improbable Olympic comeback story, a tale as much about family as it is sport.

"I think weight lifting makes me a better mom, but being a mom has made me a better weight lifter," Roach said. "When I didn't make the Olympic team in 2000, that was a devastating moment in my life. But when you compare that with having a son diagnosed with autism ....

"After the Olympics, I have to go back to a son who has autism for the rest of his life. The Olympics for me is like my moment in time where I can just enjoy it and savor it."

Melanie joined Athletes Against Autism, a foundation that former Florida Panthers captain Scott Mellanby helped launch. Dan, a Washington state legislator, is pushing through legislation assisting in diagnosis and education. He's also working toward insurance relief; he says families' out-of-pocket costs for autism therapy is $20,000 annually.

When Drew was diagnosed at age 2, Melanie grieved almost as much as if he had died.

A Mormon, she complained to her bishop that having an autistic child wasn't "what I signed up for." He told her it was exactly what she signed up for. So the Roaches began on the difficult road ahead.

Tantrums? "Daily," Melanie said, recalling the all-day fit Drew had while they were hosting a reporter from The New York Times. Drew's five-minute rampages can be equally trying.

"It takes two hours to clean it up," Dan said. "What are you going to do? Yell at him? It's not going to work."

Laughter sometimes does. Dan said he and Melanie have learned to say, "It's OK. That's 32 ounces of shampoo on the floor. We'll clean it up or put water on it and make some bubbles."

Whether Drew understands that Mom has a special job, nobody can say. Looking at Drew, you wouldn't think he does, Dan said, but studies show some autistic children are very aware but unable to express it.

On the other hand, there is older son Ethan, 7, who recognizes Mom's pictures in the local paper and occasionally blurts out, "Hey, you know Mom's famous?" which makes Dan crack up. Camille, 3, might be Mom's biggest fan, thinking it's a really big deal when she goes to train.

In Camille's mind, "She's going to the Olympics every night," Dan said.

Melanie and Dan have been married nine years. When they dated, he dabbled in weight lifting, training for four months and hoping to impress her with a 187-pound clean-and-jerk. Problem was, Melanie lifted 249 at the time. Dan knows what goes through the minds of football players working out alongside his wife every night: "There's a little girl next to them doing the same weight or more. They're just like, 'You've got to be kidding me.' "

That's what Melanie might have said years ago to the idea of qualifying for the Beijing Olympics. In 2000 she stopped lifting after being warned that she risked paralysis. A comeback attempt in 2003 was derailed by more back pain.

But in 2006 she underwent surgery, and five days later she was back in the gym.

Seven months later she captured her seventh national title.

Recently, Melanie and Dan addressed a church conference. Their theme: bumps in the road.

Each night Melanie lifts, she's preparing not just for the Olympic Games, but also for her future with Drew.

"I'm strong enough to handle him when he has a tantrum - literally," she said. "I will probably have to be a weight lifter forever to handle him because he will be a big kid. When a child with special needs like Drew with autism has a tantrum, it's not like having a fit on the floor. It's like he's going ballistic. He could hurt people."

It's not always that way, though. Each morning as Drew boards the school bus, Melanie looks him directly in the eye and says goodbye, waiting to hear him say the magic words.

"I love you."

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Pick-me-up for Olympic weightlifter
Roach's travails have lifted her spirits
By Clay Latimer

Melanie Roach felt horrible. Worn down. Under pressure. Overwhelmed by chronic back pain.

In fact, she felt exactly the way a mother of three can't feel heading into another busy week.

But that only left her with a bigger problem, when her young autistic son, Drew, threw another violent fit, shrieking, flailing and dumping food everywhere until she wrestled him to the floor of their home in Washington state.

Another woman might have sagged under that kind of stress, unable to carry her burdens and bruises through another day.

But Roach, 33, is an unusually strong woman. So strong, in fact, that she can lift twice her body weight, the first American woman to accomplish that feat.

So strong, she'll join the U.S. weightlifting team at the Beijing Olympics, eight years after a herniated disk supposedly ended her career.

So strong, she runs a business, family and the campaigns for her husband, Dan, a four-term state representative, and still finds time to pump iron every afternoon.

"When I go to the gym, I see it as a privilege," she said. "It's a moment to myself. I'm not chasing those three little kids, getting them ready for school, doing laundry, running a business, making meals, helping with homework, getting everybody in bed and helping Drew with all his needs.

"Having the opportunity to be a mom has balanced me out and made me a more complete athlete."

Former gymnast

Roach, standing 5-foot-1 and weighing 117 pounds, with a penchant for fuchsia-painted fingernails, could pass for a petite gymnast, which she was until a serious elbow injury in high school forced her out of the sport.

Finding a new passion in weightlifting, she finished third at the 1994 American Open in her competitive debut, won the first of seven national titles three years later and in 1998, became the first American woman to lift more than twice her body weight in competition, hoisting 2421/2 pounds.

Roach was a virtual lock for the 2000 Olympic team, a potential star for the sport because of her articulate charm.

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Melanie Roach says motherhood has helped her as she prepares for the Beijing Olympics.
"Having the opportunity to be a mom has balanced me out and made me a more complete athlete," she says.

But a couple of months before the trials, she heard a popping sound in her back -- a herniated disk. Unable to stand up straight, warned by a doctor that she could end up in a wheelchair, Roach tried to compete in the trials but finally quit. Sitting in the stands, she broke down crying as the Olympic team was decided.

"I was completely devastated," she said.

During the next five years, Roach and her husband opened a large gymnastics center and decided to start a family. Ethan was born in 2002, Drew 15 months later and Camille in 2005.

Several attempts at reviving her weightlifting career failed, so she settled into a traditional life, focusing on her children and business. But everything changed at a Christmas party in 2004.

"My mother-in-law started to watch Drew closely," she said. "(He) didn't interact with the other kids much. He didn't make eye contact or answer to his name. He was in his own little world.

"My mother-in-law stayed up all night reading about autism, and the next morning - Christmas Day -- she came to our house, put her arm around me and said, 'I think Drew has autism.' "

Turning point

The Roaches received a formal diagnosis five months later -- a devastating turn for Melanie, who knelt and prayed at her son's bedside every night, increasingly overwhelmed.

"There was a long time after that where I was really sad, just very depressed," she said. "You realize all of the expectations you have for your child may not happen. He might not graduate from high school, he might not ever date a girl, or go to school dances. He might not go to college. We're very active Mormons, and he'll probably never go on a mission. He may not get married or have children of his own. It's almost like you're mourning the loss of a child when they're diagnosed with autism.

"He's a sweet little kid. Really just a sweetheart. But I know there will always be a part of him that we will never be able to get to."

The Roaches must monitor Drew 24 hours a day, put keys, vitamins, drugs and food behind lock and key and control him during his outbursts, which requires all the strength Melanie once reserved for international meets.

At one point, Roach was so despondent that she turned to her 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 said. "But I don't dwell on it."

Living her dream

In spring 2005, shortly after Drew's diagnosis, Roach woke her husband and told him she wanted to try to make the 2008 Olympic team. Several months into intensive training, she was sidelined again with back pain.

A magnetic resonance imaging exam revealed she had free fragments embedded in her nerves, so in October 2006, she underwent a rare surgery to repair her damaged disk and remove bone chips from the nerve. The pain was gone.

Roach reclaimed her spot on the national team, won a bronze medal at the 2007 Pan American Games in Brazil, then turned her attention to the 2008 Olympic trials in Atlanta, determined to make good on a deferred dream.

Roach, one of the oldest athletes in the sport, made all three of her lifts in the snatch -- the heaviest was at 178 pounds -- screaming in delight after the final one.

In the clean and jerk, she easily lifted 229 pounds, then locked up her spot by hoisting a little less than 240 pounds on her second attempt. With the bar still above her head, Roach screamed again, knowing she was on her way to Beijing.

"Having Drew and the challenges of autism has helped me put things in perspective," she said. "Something like that will either tear a family apart or it draws closer together. It made us so much stronger."

Unusual test

Olympian Melanie Roach describes a recent encounter with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency on her blog, melanieroach.blogspot.com.

Yesterday, while I was shopping for some last-minute items for my trip to China, I got a call from home asking for my EXACT location. Ellen from USADA was at my house and wanted to collect a urine sample. What are the odds of her coming to my house on the one day in months that I was anywhere but home, the gym or the chiropractor? Anyhow, we decided to meet on the third floor "mothers' lounge" in Nordstrom.

So here we are, amidst mothers nursing their babies preparing to go into the bathroom stall together. I quickly explained to the lady watching us that I was preparing for China and that Ellen was there to collect a urine sample for drug testing. Anyhow, after telling her I was a weightlifter, she asked me if I had heard of that girl named Melanie Roach? I said, "I'm Melanie." Then she proceeded to tell me she was from Bonney Lake (my hometown) and was just planning to call our gymnastics gym to sign her girls up for gymnastics. What are the odds?

Anyhow, I will always remember that one time I was drug tested in the Nordstrom bathroom!

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

Will Melanie earn a medal?

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[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Weightlifter pushed through herniated disk, failed comebacks
By Vicki Michaelis

Four weeks after delivering her third child, Melanie Roach awoke from a nap and uttered a line familiar to her husband, Dan.

"Honey, I have an idea."

For five years, Roach had been through exhilarating starts and excruciating stops in her ambition to qualify for the U.S. Olympic weightlifting team. Each time she tried, the herniated disk that knocked her out of the 2000 Olympic trials flared.

Yet she wanted to try again.

"I was totally supportive," says her husband, a fourth-term member of the Washington state House of Representatives, "and thought, you know what, if by some miracle she'll be able to live through this pain and make the Olympics and even if she didn't, she would be able to get that closure. She's got this nightmare of the 2000 experience."

Now she'll have the 2008 experience.

At 33, more than a decade after taking up the sport of weightlifting, Roach is on the Olympic team. The former gymnast, first inspired by watching Mary Lou Retton at the 1984 Games, will compete as a featherweight (117 pounds) Sunday.

Her size (she stands just over 5 feet tall), her age and her status as a mother of three all strip away stereotypes of Olympic weightlifters. But the biggest obstacle for Roach was the "constant, deep, heavy ache" she lived with for six years, through the births of her children and multiple comeback attempts.

In 1994, Roach began weightlifting on the advice of a gymnastics judge who was also a weightlifter. By 1998, Roach had set a world record, lifting 250 pounds in the clean and jerk. She was the first U.S. woman to lift double her body weight.

In May 2000, Roach was in peak condition, lifting personal bests and primed for the Olympic trials, which were scheduled eight weeks later. One day in training, her knee was a bit sore, so she decided to do partial lifts.

"I used poor technique on a weight that should have been easy," she says. "You hunch over just enough with that much weight on your back, and I heard and felt a 'pop, pop' and a twinge down my leg. I immediately started getting sharp pains into my leg."

An MRI scan showed a herniated disk. She pushed through the pain in training. She got cortisone shots. She was determined to compete at trials.

"I was really just praying for a miracle," she says. "I felt like I was going to make the team."

Her first lift at trials, the snatch, was subpar. She knew the miracle wasn't to be. She withdrew, then cried while watching in the stands with her family. It was, she says, "the most devastating time in my life up to that point."

Immediately after trials, she got pregnant with her first child, Ethan, now 7. She started a comeback after his birth, but had to stop because of her back pain. Tests showed fragments had broken off the disk.

Nevertheless, she repeated the comeback cycle after delivering her second child, Drew, now 5. She competed at nationals, trying to make the 2003 world championship team. The top seven women at nationals qualified. She finished eighth, still in pain.

She quit weightlifting. She had been teaching gymnastics near their home in Bonney Lake, Wash., so she and her husband decided to open a gymnastics facility. Roach Gymnastics now has 500 students.

Then came Roach's youngest child, Camille, in March 2005, and, within a month, the urge to try weightlifting returned again. She went back to the gym but within a month had another new reality to shoulder.

Drew was diagnosed with autism.

She admits the news sent her spiraling into depression, with worries over how much it would change Drew's life. But it also gave her perspective. "I realized that if you compared a child being diagnosed with autism to not making the Olympic team, all of a sudden that Olympic thing doesn't seem so bad."

Managing her back pain with help from a chiropractor and rest periods from training, she qualified for the 2006 world championships team. There, a U.S. team doctor told her about a procedure called microdiscectomy, revolutionary because it wouldn't require cutting much muscle to remove the bone fragments from her back, thereby reducing her recovery time.

She had the surgery in fall 2006.

Within five days, she was back in the gym for limited training, staying off pain medication so she could monitor her back. Within eight weeks, she was doing Olympic lifts.

In the spring of 2007, she won her seventh national title and clean-and-jerked double her body weight again for the first time since before the injury. At the 2008 trials, she was the first woman to secure her Olympic berth.

"Here we are," she says, "hopefully finishing what we started 14 years ago."

[Chris Ⓐ LeRoux]

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Pierce County's Melanie Roach living a dream
The gym has fallen silent. All of the other weightlifters stop their workouts. It feels like somebody hit a mute button. Everyone is watching Melanie...
By Steve Kelley

SUMNER — The gym has fallen silent. All of the other weightlifters stop their workouts. It feels like somebody hit a mute button. Everyone is watching Melanie Roach.

Standing on her platform, she stares at the wall on the far side of the gym, as focused as a heart surgeon. Her coach, John Thrush, bent over, his hands on his knees, speaking just above a whisper, goes through his checklist one more time.

She walks to the barbell and bends to grip it. In a quick explosion of technique and power and energy, Roach jerks the bar over her head and the 17 people watching her cheer as if this were something more than a workout, as if this were Aug. 10 in Beijing.

On this warm July afternoon, Roach snatches 82 kilos (180 pounds) in training. She hadn't done that in training in her entire career.

"Her training is going phenomenally well," Thrush said.

After going through so much. After failing to qualify for the 2000 Olympics because of a herniated disk suffered eight weeks before the trials. After the births of her three children, including her autistic son, Drew, 5.

After back surgery two years ago to remove three bone fragments from her spine. After the eight national championships she somehow accomplished in between the joy of motherhood and the agony of back pain, Melanie Roach is going to the Olympics, representing the United States in the 53 kg (117 pounds) class.

And she is a genuine medal contender.

"I'm a little disdainful of people who talk about what they're going to do," said Thrush, who has been her coach since her first national championship in 1997. "But this training cycle she is in is the best she's ever had. Ever. And I think part of it is because the pressure's off. I think the Olympics, in a way, are going to be easier because Atlanta was such an unknown."

After her disappointment in 2000, the buildup for the trials in Atlanta eight years later was enormous.

"I was so emotional for the two weeks before the trials," Roach said. "It was crazy. I remember the last Saturday workout when I knew I had done all I could. I broke down in tears. I was crying uncontrollably at the end of my workout. I was just so happy that I'd done all I could.

"For me, it was like labor and delivery. It's a weird kind of comparison, but when you go into labor, you know you're going to have a baby. There's no stopping it now. And the night before the trials, I remember thinking, 'I'm nervous. I'm excited. It's here. This is it and I can't stop it now.' It was so exciting."

On the day of trials, 5-foot-2 Roach weighed in just slightly more than the allowable 117 pounds. She briefly panicked, but called Thrush, who calmly told her to chew gum (preferably cinnamon) and spit into a cup. She made the No. 1 position on the four-member team.

Since the trials, Roach, 33, has become one of the most compelling stories in the buildup to Beijing. She has been on NBC's "Today" and been interviewed by Time magazine.

"I want to take in as much of this experience as possible and share my story with as many people as possible," Roach said. "But at the end of the day, when the Olympics is over, I want to know that I did everything I could to be prepared for whatever happens there with no regrets. That's what this whole process has been about. No regrets."

Roach declined an opportunity to fly to New York to do an on-set demonstration for Fox and turned down another trip to Philadelphia. She postponed a trip to the mound at Safeco Field to throw out the first pitch at a Mariners game until after the Olympics.

"It's been a difficult thing, because on the one hand I don't want to deny her these opportunities as they come along," Thrush said. "I've never told her no on anything, but I've sort of inferred that no would be a good choice. And she's made the right choices, which I think is a sign of her maturity."

As a mother, as the wife of state Rep. Dan Roach involved in a November race, and as an Olympic athlete, Roach has to be a multitasker. With everything else happening in her life, she and her husband and her coach also had to move their operations.

When they first partnered, Roach lifted in Thrush's garage. They moved to a converted day-care center. But in the last month, with all of the Olympic preparation in front of them, they moved into a spacious gem of a building in an industrial park in Sumner.

Roach's gymnastics school, which her husband operates and has more than 500 students, is on one side of the building. Thrush's weightlifting gym is on the other.

Her life leading up to Beijing has been a wondrous whirlwind. Yet Roach has kept her perspective. She has been the model pupil.

"As a coach, you have this plan and you have this idea in your mind of what an athlete can do if they do everything right," Thrush said. "And so many times you get sabotaged along the way by so many things you can't control. Behavior, lifestyle changes, that kind of stuff. They just resist doing things you know they should do.

"But Melanie's not like that. If I tell her she needs to do something, she does it. End of story. Now, to see the culmination of everything done right, it's very gratifying for me. For me and this athlete, in concert, to do this very difficult thing and get all the way to the Olympics, that's pretty wonderful. And if she continues like this, I see her setting all new American records in the Olympics."

Roach and Thrush were supposed to make this trip eight years ago. That was before her back stabbed her and stole her Olympic experience.

Eight years later, she is healthy again. She has grabbed the ring and is living a dream.