A long jump back: Elyria's Tianna Bartoletta still working for Olympic berth in face of health scare, virus shutdown

In a normal year, Tianna Bartoletta would be about ready to move outside from the indoor track season. She'd begin her buildup for the U.S. Olympic Trials slated for June 19-28 in Oregon and ultimately the Olympic Games in Tokyo from July 24-Aug. 9. Things haven't been normal. Far from it for Bartoletta. And that started well before the coronavirus crisis affected just about everything across society. Including the possible postponement of the Olympics. Bartoletta, the Elyria High School graduate and three-time Olympic gold medalist, has been back to training full time for only about a month due to a serious health scare that surfaced last summer. She's working out two or three times a day after not being able to handle the rigors of training at the beginning of the year. "Things are going well and turning in the right direction, which is especially important since it's an important year for athletes," Bartoletta said by phone. "Being defending Olympic champion, it was a very stressful reality that it was fully possible that my body wouldn't allow me to be in the mix. I did everything I could to get back to healthy and to get back on the track." 'I feel like I'm dying' Her performances had fallen off, she fought through an ankle injury and while competing in Europe she was alerted through a drug test that blood work showed she was developing severe anemia. She got iron infusions and met with doctors but didn't improve. "I finally went back to the doctor again and told him: 'I feel like I'm dying. I really feel that this isn't right. I'm very comfortable in my body. I have a lot of body awareness and my body is dying and I need help. I can't train. If there's no help for this, then I'm going to have to retire because I can't do both things. I can't live and train. The training will kill me,'" she said. Bartoletta was sent to a gynecologist at the University of Colorado Memorial Hospital, which is next door to the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. The doctor diagnosed a tumor in her uterus that was hemorrhaging blood, the result of a condition called fibroids. Four hours later, Bartoletta had emergency surgery. That was in December. "All these problems kind of fell into my lap," she said. "Both they and I first thought that we were going to be dealing with a sprained ankle at the beginning back in August. The doctor said that I was about a week away from organ failure." Fibroids are abnormal growths that develop in or on a woman's uterus. Sometimes the tumors become large and cause severe abdominal pain and heavy periods. In other cases, they cause no signs or symptoms. The growths are typically benign, and the cause of fibroids is unknown. "The biopsy came back as benign but it absolutely will reoccur at some point but we don't know when," Bartoletta said. "It could be months, it could be years. I came back again and my numbers were worse again, so the solution then was to get a blood transfusion." Due to the delicate and controversial nature of athletic drug testing, Bartoletta had to submit medical records and get approval for the blood transfusion from the IAAF (now World Athletics) in conjunction with the World Anti-Doping Agency. She got the approval and had the blood transfusion in February at UC Memorial Hospital. "I got two units of blood, which isn't a lot," she said. "I could have used way more, but it was enough of a head start to allow my body to start healing itself. That's why I was able to get back on the track. "I actually waited longer than I should have to request the transfusion. The head doctor actually scolded me for waiting to make the request, but I was hoping that my body might do its own thing and heal on my own but it just didn't." Getting ready Despite track and field -- and much of the world -- being stuck in limbo because of the coronavirus, Bartoletta is trying her best to maintain a quality training program and timeline. "You can train to peak. Assume nothing changes," she said. "Which is what most pro athletes are doing now. College athletes don't have that luxury. They've been sent home. As a pro athlete, you assume that nothing has changed. You assume the Trials will be on the dates that were announced and you assume that the Games will go on. "The thing to worry about when we get there is to be ready to be fast July 24 and then the Olympics not happen. What I would do if something weren't to take place is that you take your week off, you recover, you recharge your mind, your spirit and then you basically rewrite your training program for whatever period of time you have to extend your season. That's how you do that. That's periodization 101. It can be done. The issue is the mental toll of not knowing what is to be done. That's the large issue." After the personal trials, Bartoletta's resolve is galvanized in a bid to make her third straight Olympics. The 2003 Elyria grad moved from Montgomery, Ala., to Richmond, Calif., in the San Francisco area in October 2019 and is a volunteer assistant sprints/jump coach for the University of California Berkeley Bears. With the UC track facility and her gym being padlocked last week, Bartoletta has had to improvise by using other public tracks to train. "As important as it is to stay away from people to not spread the virus knowingly or unwittingly, they do encourage you to get outside and to be active," she said. "Even though you and I may not be worried about getting the virus and recovering from it, we could be giving it to people who can't. "There's still a lot of social responsibility involved. I take that seriously. I take life seriously, especially since I nearly died in November. This isn't something I'm willing to be reckless about in order to train." Bartoletta has not yet qualified for the Olympic Trials. The qualifying standards for her two events are 22 feet, 1 inch for long jump and 11.15 seconds for the 100 meters. Her best long jump in 2019 was only 20-8¾ and her best 100 time was 11.44. She long jumped 22-1¼ in 2018 but hasn't made the standard for the 100 since 2017 when she clocked 11.04 at Berlin. The qualifying window to make it into the Trials is May 1 to June 7. Her career best for long jump is 23-6, which she cleared when she won the Olympic gold medal at the 2016 Rio Games. Her best 100 meters is 10.78, which she ran at the 2016 Trials. Her other two Olympic gold medals came as a member of the 4x100 as leadoff in 2012 and 2016. "I'm just grateful I can train," she said. "I'm not interested to figure out how to adjust my training program to the USATF's statements or the IOC's statements. I'm really grateful every day I get the opportunity to see what my body can do and to see how my body is healing." The qualifying meets Bartoletta pointed toward this spring have been wiped out due to the coronavirus. The first three Diamond League meets have been postponed, as well. "Sure, I'm a bit frustrated, things might not work out, but those type things are out of my control," she said. "Honestly, I'm used to that. I've had a tough little life. I know how to handle fighting for something and doing the work and things not working out for you. I know I will be OK. I know it will be all right." Issues mount The 2019 track season was a challenging one for Bartoletta. Her performances for long jump and the 100 meters didn't match up to the levels of 2017 and 2018. She first suffered a badly sprained ankle long jumping at a Diamond League meet in Hungary. She switched takeoff legs from left to right to get through and salvage the remainder of the outdoor season. At the same time, blood work revealed she was developing severe anemia that required her to get to a doctor as quickly as possible. "I felt OK," she said. "I was getting dizzy at practice but I thought it was just because I was pushing myself or maybe I wasn't eating enough. I was rationalizing away a lot of the symptoms for the anemia that I was dealing with. "When I got back home in August I learned my ferritin (iron) level was seven and it should have been 40. I had a full schedule over there but it wasn't going well because my ankle was not recovering as I expected." Since 2016 Bartoletta has rotated her training base between the U.S. and the Netherlands. Although her ankle finally began to heal after returning home, her hemoglobin level remained low. "The doctor wanted to know how I was losing so much blood," she said. "Another thing that I hadn't been talking about (with the doctor) was that my menstrual cycles had gotten really, really long and really heavy. I had no idea that that blood loss could trigger severe anemia, which was triggering other problems. My vision was going, my heart was tasked, my muscles were fatiguing very fast. I didn't know that was the effect it would have. "The plan was that I would fly back and forth to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs for a series of iron infusion, to receive it intravenously. I had no iron in my body and none in my stores." Despite the iron infusion, Bartoletta's condition worsened. "I was miserable and couldn't get through a workout," she said. "I was almost collapsing during training. When I would get home at night I would fall into such a deep sleep it was hard to wake me. When I did wake up I would be extremely exhausted. In my yoga classes I would have to take breaks for long periods of time in order to get my heart rate back under control." That's when she finally went to the doctor and told him she felt like she was dying. Helping out Bartoletta isn't only focused on herself. She's trying to help track athletes nationwide, particularly those in high school whose spring season is in a holding pattern. She's made her training program available online at a reduced rate. "I work closely with college athletes and college coaches. When the season was abruptly ended the way that it did, I saw the effect that it had," she said. "I also have a lot of high school athletes who follow me, who reach out to me, who email me. A lot are extremely distraught about losing their season. The thing that the college athletes have over the high school kids is that the NCAA can give the college athletes their season back. No one is staying an extra year in high school so they relive their senior year. "I'm just trying to make the time a little bit more palatable for a lot of athletes on any level. I'm used to things like this happening in my life. I'm not used to it happening on a global scale, but in my life I've learned to be creative, make do, bounce back. The thinking for me was I've already written these programs and every program I've written has been for myself that I share with other people. "I thought it was an appropriate time to make them available for free or make them available super, super cheap so that athletes feel supported in this time. We were kind of left dangling, left hanging in the uncertain. That does not feel good. Athletes dominate in the realm of the things that we can control. We need that structure. None of that exists now. I'm just trying to help where I can." Contact Paul Heyse at 329-7135 at ctsports@chroniclet.com.