Been helping train an Olympic Pentathlete!!!
 

Probably none of you know this, but other than car-spotting, I've been fencing (with swords, not chicken-wire) for the last few years, and I've been slowly working my way up the ranks in Michigan. I am an assistant coach at the University of Michigan and have been for two years now and have coached the 2007 United States Collegiate Club Championship winning fencing team and the 2008 Third Place team. I'm probably in the top 10 fencers in Michigan at this point, though that's pretty shitty compared to the real heavy fencing states like NY, CA and Oregon.

At any rate, I've been fencing with and giving advice to an Olympic Pentathlete! Her name is Sheila Taormina and she's going to be the first person to compete at the Olympics in 3 different sports. She won gold in 1996 in the 4x200 Freestyle relay race and competed in 2000 and 2004 in Triathlon, but she switched to Pentathlon in 2005 and has been training ever since including fencing in Colorado and now here in Michigan (Livonia to be more exact). She's a really cool lady, tough as nails but really friendly too...and not exactly young at this point, I think she's 39 if memory serves...

Check out her website if you're interested, there's a fairly interesting video :-)

www.sheilat.com

Thats pretty interesting man, good luck with it! By any chance are you featured in the video on her website?

The best I can manage is to say that I went to school with an Australian 800m representative. Sounds cool, good luck with it!

I went to school with a couple of the AFL guys ! Even ended up beating one up :P... long story :(

Wow. Penthathlon. Mad.

Good luck to you guys! :thumbup:

*I just realized Olympics is just a couple of months away.

Naw...I'm not in any of the video on her site, but if I remember, I'll have someone take video of the two of us on Thursday when I'm out there training with her again.

Thats cool man, good luck with it, and hopefully you are successful in this and you get bigger opportunities.....although this is a hella nice one i must say.