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XL Golden Girl doesn't fit the model...great Olympic story

Turkey Track Bar

Well-known member
I think this gal is pretty refreshing; plus she's a gold medalist!

From the Denver Post story: http://www.denverpost.com/sports/ci_10240349

XL golden girl doesn't fit mold
Stephanie Brown Trafton wins discus
By Mark Kiszla
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 08/19/2008 01:03:20 AM MDT


BEIJING — Are we ready for an Olympic sweetheart who hunts wild boar, shops for clothes at the plus-size store and doesn't dance on a balance beam? Meet Stephanie Brown Trafton. She's gonna be big.

By becoming the first American woman to win the discus since 1932, this 6-foot-4 athlete won Olympic gold for every girl who ever scrunched her shoulders to look shorter or was told as a gangly adolescent that beauty runs deeper than the cover of Teen Vogue.

As a kid, Brown Trafton had dreamed of what she did here Monday night, but now laughs at how her happy ending got its start.

"I had a Mary Lou Retton leotard that I wore all the time," said Brown Trafton, who dressed up and made believe she was an Olympic pixie. "But I grew out of it rather quickly. I was not going to be a gymnast."

Somebody call David Letterman. We've found him a guest so fresh and so far out of left field that she couldn't possibly be prepackaged by corporate America.

Heck, Brown Trafton's husband didn't even bother to make the trip to watch her compete.

"If you could hunt wild pig in China, he'd be here," the 28-year-old Californian explained. "It's hunting season right now. And I'm missing it."

She is the most wonderfully unexpected party-crasher the Summer Games have seen since a referee raised the hand of wrestler Rulon Gardner to make him an instant American folk hero. Brown Trafton's winning toss was 64.74 meters (212 feet, 4 3/4 inches), not too shabby for the third and final qualifier in the discus at the U.S. Olympic Trials.

"Anybody know what that is in feet?" she asked.

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

"Hi, you guys," Brown Trafton bashfully said, as her gold medal bounced on a table with a loud clank when she slid behind the microphone for her first news conference as an Olympic champ. "How you all doing?"

Much better now, thank you very much.

With all due respect, when Brown Trafton stood atop the victory podium with a crowd of 90,000 admiring her, instead of "The Star- Spangled Banner" they should have cranked up "My Girl" by the Temptations.
Because Brown Trafton gave us sunshine on what had been a very cloudy day for Team USA. The track team had been stubbed toes when she entered the discus ring.

Until Brown Trafton made a beautiful noise, no American had won in a stadium known as the Bird's Nest, and the race against China for the most gold medals at the Summer Games was all over except the crying.

Swimmer Michael Phelps was awesome, but who knew he was a one-man U.S. team? Take away his first-place finishes, and Americans were winning events barely more often than Korea.

The hangover from the celebration of Phelps seemed so pronounced, one wondered if NBC might attract more viewers if the network decided to pre-empt the remainder of its nonstop Olympic programming for a marathon of "Friends" reruns.

Let's be honest. The Olympics are as sexist as sports on TV get. The leading ladies of the Games are adorable pixies in the summer and leggy skaters in the winter.

So will we embrace Brown Trafton? She hunts pigs with a gun. She is bummed because her favorite big-and-tall store went out of business. She jokes that a brother who's 4 years older must forever deal with the ego-shattering reality of having a big sister. She urges her lackluster-performing U.S. teammates to get it in gear, or else.

"When somebody told me it was the first gold medal we've won in track, I was shocked," Brown Trafton said. "It better not be our last. Or I'll hunt 'em down."

Her win was for every one of us who has ever stood in front of the TV at home and sung the national anthem, imaging what it was like to be No. 1, while hoping the neighbors didn't spy our private Walter Mitty moment because the curtains to the family room were open.

"I came to the Bird's Nest to lay a golden egg," Brown Trafton said.

Here's guessing she always had a 14-carat heart.

It just took the Olympics for the whole world to see it.

Hey, hey, hey.

Our girl just made us look at American beauty in a brand new way.

Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or [email protected]
 
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