Word: mulkey
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Luckily for ordinary competitors with ambitions to win, relatively few former Olympians or other world-class athletes appear at the Senior Games. Perhaps they don't want to smudge the public memory of their heroic youth. Phil Mulkey, 66, is an exception--a former Olympian who will compete in the Games who has an additional explanation for the absence of other stars of long ago. "Part of the reason may be that they are just worn out," he says. The ordeals of a young superathlete's training and competition have an aftermath. "I can tell you that my bones...
...skinny, resourceful farm kid in Missouri, Mulkey used the head of a post maul as a shot put, a plow disk as a discus, a pitchfork handle as a javelin. He cut a bamboo tree into a pole and vaulted onto the garage. That was the beginning of a career that took him to the 1960 Olympics in Rome. Going into the finals in the decathlon, he needed only to clear his usual height of 14 ft. 10 in., in the pole vault to win a bronze medal. But he pulled a groin muscle and had to withdraw...
Despite that devastating defeat, he never lost his passion for sports. Mulkey continued to compete through the '60s, winning national titles as a decathlete. Along the way, he got married, raised four children, became a school headmaster and later tried his hand at several businesses in Atlanta...
...prepare for the Senior Games, Mulkey sprints daily along the streets of Marietta, Ga., outside Atlanta, and pole vaults an average of three times a week. He then downs a breakfast that would turn a health faddist ashen: scrambled eggs, sausage and biscuits and two hotcakes at a local fast-food spot. Vitamins B and C are the only supplements he takes...
...Mulkey does not put himself through agony for the sake of fitness or fellowship. He goes to the Senior Games to win. Before and after the competition, he is sociable, but not during. "The adrenaline gets going, and how can you combine that with cordiality?" he asks. "I'm the worst guy out there." Or perhaps the best. Since 1989, he has won 15 gold medals and has set 14 national Senior Games records in pole vault, high jump, long jump, discus and shot...