Late June in Indianapolis is hot enough to make almost anyone sweat bullets. Anyone, that is, except for Grace Upshaw. The Los Altos Hills, Calif. resident doesn’t perspire. She just glows.
At the 2007 USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Indy, Upshaw stood at the end of a daunting runway for her final leap in the women’s long jump competition. The 2004 Olympian was way back in fifth place. A qualifying spot on the USA team for the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Osaka was on the line. The steely Cal grad took charge of her own destiny.
“The ‘what if’ thought tried to creep in and I immediately pushed it away,” Upshaw recalled. “I knew what I was capable of jumping, and reminded myself, and focused on that instead. The crowd was great in Indianapolis, and their rhythmic clapping helped narrow my focus even more on what I had to do.”
What she did was sprint like mad and then unfurl a technically perfect blast (22 feet, 1.5 inches/6.74 meters), stealing her third outdoor national title in five years, and securing a berth on the USA team for Osaka. Most impressively, Upshaw did it like a cool cucumber under the blazing Indiana sun.
The athletic career of Grace Upshaw wasn’t always quite so golden. While competing for Acalanes High School (Lafayette, Calif.), the young Upshaw managed to qualify for the 1993 California state championship meet where the peerless Marion Jones won the girls long jump competition. Jones’ 22-foot performance out-jumped Upshaw by a long 5 feet. Upshaw’s collegiate track career began as a freshman walk-on at the University of Oregon before she transferred to the University of California, Berkeley. Although she continued to improve at Berkeley, collegiate national titles, and even Pac-10 Conference crowns, eluded her. Years of diligent training, and not a lot to show for it.
In fact, Grace wasn’t even the best long jumper in her own immediate family. That’s because she inherited a tall order from her dad, Monte Upshaw. In 1954, as an 18-year-old Piedmont High School senior, Monte leapt 25-4.25, eclipsing the national high school record held for more than 20 years by the legendary Jesse Owens.
After graduating from Cal in 1997, Grace—like so many other collegiate athletes— hung up her spikes. She moved to Los Angeles and threw herself into a career in the music video industry. Her long jumping career was on the shelf, collecting spider webs for the entire 1998 and 1999 campaigns—that is, until she happened to meet 1984 Olympic champion Al Joyner.
“I really missed the sport,” Upshaw said, “and he inspired me to give it another try, [convincing me] that I did have talent.”
So, after a two-year hiatus from the sport, she moved back to her Bay Area home base and began training feverishly. In the winter of 2000, Grace’s older sister, Joy, introduced Grace to coach Edrick Floreal (the current Director of Track & Field at Stanford University who was a 1988 and 1992 Canadian Olympian). That meeting eventually opened the door for Grace’s surprise breakthrough.
“[Floreal] was reluctant to coach me at first,” Upshaw said, “ but I finally convinced him to give me a chance a couple weeks before the Olympic Trials in 2000. Within one week, he coached me to a new PR and I was able to make it to the finals at the trials. After that I knew I found the coach that would help get me on the team four years later.”
Like a wind at her back, Coach Floreal swiftly mentored Upshaw to a 9-inch improvement the very next year (2001), and a second place finish at the USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships. Upshaw made more forward progress in 2002, earning a Track & Field News #1 American ranking.
The pre-Olympic year of 2003 garnered even more accolades for Upshaw. As the dominant American female long jumper, she posted the top five U.S. marks for the year, won her first U.S. national outdoor title, and ranked number five in the world. Those three years set the stage for Upshaw’s ticket to the big dance in Athens, Greece.
At the 2004 U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials in Sacramento, Grace stretched to a superb 22-2.5 jump (2nd place), claiming her stake as a U.S. Olympian and, arguably, “most accomplished athlete” status in the Upshaw family. (Grace’s older sister, Joy, is also an accomplished track athlete who holds a number of U.S. records in the masters ranks - Editor.) In Athens, Grace finished a very respectable 10th place, and rounded out her Olympic year on the medalist’s podium in international locales such as Martinique, Italy, Japan and Sweden (where she set her current personal best of 22-5.25).
After 2004, Coach Floreal stopped coaching open athletes to focus on his new role as Director of Track & Field at Stanford. Joy assumed a sister/coach/advisor role for Grace, and, in 2005, the younger sibling was ranked #4 in the world (#2 U.S.) by T&F News. In 2007, Upshaw moved to Los Angeles where Mike Powell, the men’s long jump world record holder, coached her through the summer season that culminated in Osaka, and a #2 U.S. ranking by T&F News.
Fast forward to 2008. A focussed Upshaw is training for her third U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials.
What changes have the 32-year-old athlete made for this quadrennial go-around?
“The big change for me this year has been that I’m back with my coach, Edrick Floreal. Before this year, the last meet he coached me at was the Olympic Games. We were both extremely disappointed with my outcome in 2004. Going into this year, I knew that if I was going to do anything worthwhile, I needed to be with the coach that always got the best out of me. I met with him in October of 2007, and we agreed to work together again for the upcoming Olympic year.”
How has Upshaw’s past success affected her approach for the future?
“Becoming an Olympian has impacted my daily life in a constant way,” Upshaw responded. “Reaching that goal meant a lot to me. I made choices in my life and worked hard to make that goal happen. It’s a reminder to me that I have the ability to achieve things if I believe that I can.”
That belief, along with a well-honed plan with Coach Floreal, seem to bode well so far in this Olympic year. Upshaw opened her outdoor campaign on May 4th at the Payton Jordan Cardinal Invitational where she matched her best-ever opener with a winning jump of 21-11 (wind aided). Next, at the always competitive Coca Cola California Invitational Relays (Modesto, May 10th), she raced down the runway and won again with a solid 21-11.75 footer on her final jump. The effort was over the allowable wind limitation, but the mark ranked among the longest American seasonal efforts in '08.
The distance at Modesto was decent considering how I was feeling,” Upshaw said. “It was also good for me because I had to problem-solve without Edrick. My 15 year old niece, Sunny (Joy’s daughter), who I’ve been helping to coach in the long jump this year, was the one giving me feedback. She knows what I’m looking for because we go over video together quite a bit. It was fun seeing her motion things to me that I needed to try, and correct on the next jump.”
Upshaw planned just two more “practice meets” before the Olympic Trials in Eugene, Ore.: the adidas Track Classic (Carson, Calif., May 18th) and the Prefontaine Classic (Eugene, June 8th). Then it’s track and field under the big tent with a ticket to Beijing in a red-white-blue uniform as the ultimate stakes.
What will it take to become one of the fortunate three U.S. female long jumpers heading to China in August? Fortitude, focus, finesse—and probably a healthy dose of amazing Grace.
(l to r) Grace with niece Sunny Margerum (middle) and
sister/Sunny's Mom, Joy Upshaw-Margerum.
www.usatf.org/athletes/bios/Upshaw_Grace.asp
Story published in May, 2008
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