Reno High's Kathy Weston looks back on her 1976 Olympics appearance — and the 1980 boycott

With the Paris Summer Olympics starting this week, one of the greatest runners in Nevada history is starting to regain her passion for the sport.

Kathy Weston was newly out of Reno High School when she competed in the Summer Olympics as a 17-year-old on the U.S. team in 1976 for those Montreal Olympic Games. She was also a captain for the U.S. track and field team the following year.

Unfortunately, those Montreal Games turned out to be Weston's only Olympics, as the U.S. boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. That boycott soured her on the sport and she soon gave up running.

"I was training for that (1980 Olympics) and you throw out four years of your life of training," Weston said. "It's gone."

She had another reason to be upset at the boycott: Her mother's family lived in Ukraine. She had been planning to go there and to go see her daughter at the Moscow Olympics.

"She was in a concentration camp and had not been home since World War II," Weston said. "She had agreed to go back to go see her parents in 1980. (President Jimmy) Carter pulled us out and we didn't get to go and and my grandparents ended up dying and she didn't get to see them. So, it was a double-whammy for me."

She is still grows upset talking about the boycott, saying athletics should not be political and athletes should not pay the price for politicians decisions.

"The athletes, we all competed against each other from every place in the world and you were gaining friendships and understanding cultures. Young athletes are the future," she said. "To have politicians make decisions like that, with no understanding of the value what's going on. The people on the lowest rung have to pay the price for politicians not being able to make it work."

Her early days

In the 1970s Weston was a standout runner and became a national running sensation — first in high school, where her Reno High biology teacher, Eldon Anderson, became her running coach; then at Oregon State. She will be inducted into the Oregon State Hall of Fame this fall.

Weston did not have an official coach at Reno High, and in the 1970s it was unusual for high school athletes to compete in other states.

Weston was competing in a track meet while at Clayton Junior High when a parent in Reno noticed her talent for the sport and put her in contact with a coach from Sacramento. That coach would mail her 8-by-7 index cards with detailed workouts for her to follow. She took those cards to Anderson and they would train on the track at Nevada as he made sure she followed the workouts precisely.

Weston (now Blom) is still in contact with Anderson, who is in his late 80s and lives in Illinois. He recently sent her a package containing every postcard she had sent him back then from every corner of the globe.

"I looked through it and I couldn't remember having been in some of the places," she said. "I didn't know I had ever been to Czechoslovakia, but I've been there twice, according to all the postcards."

With not much money and no coach, Weston was on her own quite a bit as she traveled the world competing. She recalled that other athletes from the East Coast always had coaches with them.

Until they didn't.

One such athlete did not know how to be on her own without her ever-present coach and on a solo international trip, she fell apart and cried for hours, while Weston was used to navigating the world and track meets by herself.

Weston said all athletes need to learn that kind of independence.

"It really holds them back in life," she said of parents who do everything for their children. "You can watch them from afar, but they better be able to function on their own."

Weston won a gold medal in the 800-meter race at the 1975 Pan-Am Games, and anchored the silver medal 4x400 relay.

At Oregon State, she was a 1979 All-American as anchor of the two-mile relay AIAW championship team.

She was a two-time NCWSA Regional champion with wins in the 400 meters (1979), and 800 meters (1980),  and  anchored three winning Regional relays in her two seasons at OSU.

She set the Oregon State record in the 400 (one runner has since beaten her record) and 800 meters (she's still first). Weston won the 1978 AIAW 800 meters championship, but was not competing for OSU at the time.

When she qualified for the Olympics, the women's trials were held separately from the men's. The men's and women's Trials were united a year later.

The 1980 boycott was the end of running for Weston. She returned to Reno, where her brother Jim Weston was the police chief. In 1992, she moved to Modesto, California and joined the police department there, retiring in 2012. She now teaches criminal justice at California State University and at Modesto Junior College.

Weston, now 66 years old, said she did not even think about running anymore for the past 44 years until recently when the U.S. Olympic Trials were being televised earlier this summer.

"The second I started watching it, it was like I was right in it all again, reliving it, all excited. It brought back a lot of memories," Weston said.

This article originally appeared on Reno Gazette Journal: Reno High's Kathy Weston looks back on her 1976 Olympics appearance — and the 1980 boycott