OLYMPIC DREAM: De Dee Nathan shares tales of competing in trials, making Olympic team

It has been 20 years since her last Summer Olympics team trials, but De Dee Nathan still enjoys sharing tales of her journey and moment in Olympic history.
Nathan, who has lived in Locust for two years and works as an executive administrative assistant for a dental company, spoke with the SNAP ahead of the Summer Olympics in Paris, which had its opening ceremonies Friday night.
Nathan competed in four Summer Olympics team trials over her 15-year professional career.
She was a competitor in the seven-event heptathlon, which features the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put and 200-meter dash on the first day and the long jump, javelin and 800-meter run the next day.
Her favorite event is the long jump.
“I just love it,” she said. “I’ve just been long jumping since I was a kid. I started competing when I was 12.”
Her least favorite in the heptathlon is the 800-meter run.
“Heptathletes are literally some of the toughest athletes,” she said.
Her first attempt at making the U.S. team was for the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games.
“I was fresh out of college in ‘92 and I had only done, I think that was only my third heptathlon,” Nathan said.
But all did not go well. At the trials in Louisiana, for some reason she started slowing down around the 600-meter mark of the 800-meter run.
“By the time I got to the finish line I had gotten fourth in the event and I ended up having a heat stroke,” she said.
The try for the 1996 team in Atlanta was similar.
“When I went to the ‘96 trials I was in the best shape of my life. I thought to myself, ‘OK, I’ll make this team and I can retire. This will be great.’ I was 28 years old and thought, ‘This is perfect, the games will be at home (in the U.S.) and everybody can come see me compete,’ ” she said. “I had become a Christian at that point and God had been dealing with me about rectifying behaviors and doing some different things and I wasn’t obedient.”
She ended up missing the team by the same amount of points she did in 1992, partially due to stepping on the line in one of her javelin throws.
“I wasn’t obedient to what God told me to do,” she said. “I accepted that and everyone else was just devastated.”
The Sydney 2000 Summer Games was a different story.
“I won the trials and made the team, but I was also obedient in what God told me to do,” she said.
She finished ninth overall in Sydney despite having an Achilles injury.
Being injured and competing is nothing new for Olympians. Nathan spoke of one of her former teammates who became injured in a recreational activity, but she competed anyway in her events.
“There’s something about the mentality of the athletes on that level,” she said. “It’s all or nothing. This is it. You don’t know that you’ll ever get another chance to do it. … You do what you have to do to finish.”
She tried again to compete in the 2004 Athens Games, mostly for herself.
“I was the oldest heptathlete at that trial,” she said.
She is not a fan of adding events to the Olympics for the sake of having more events, such as the addition of breaking to this year’s Games.
“Not that they don’t have skills, not that they aren’t good at what they do,” she said. “When I think of the Olympics, you think of running, jumping, wrestling, equestrian, gymnastics, swimming and other water sports, basketball, baseball, etc., not U.S. recreational/intramural activities.”

B.J. Drye is general manager/editor of The Stanly News & Press. Call 704-982-2123.

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