Spartan Profiles: Jolene Moore
WALKING THE WALK
In the 1966 comedy Walk Don’t Run, Tim Hutton plays a U.S. athlete at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics who avoids identifying his sport—race walking. Jolene Moore, ’89, a leading contender to make the 2004 U.S. Olympic racewalking team in Athens, says things haven’t changed much. “Racewalking is still very obscure,” says Moore. “We have few sponsors, and most people don’t know about it.” Nonetheless, Jolene boasts the fourth best time in the 20K race in the U.S. at 1:39:50, recently finished 4th at the 2003 U.S. Indoor Track and Field Nationals, and has a good chance to succeed at the Olympic Trials in Sacramento this summer.
A native of Benzonia, Jolene attended MSU on a cross country scholarship. After graduation, she moved to Chicago, where she worked in advertising and later taught school. “I kept up with long distance racing but I suffered a back injury and my doctor basically said, ‘You can’t run anymore.’” But in 1996, while watching a racewalking event at the Atlanta Olympics, she said, “I can’t run, but I can do that!”
Racewalking has not come easy. The technique of never leaving the ground and of stepping onto a straight leg took some getting used to. “I always get two red cards in a race, either for lifting or bending the knees,” she notes. “But I’ve never been disqualified (three red cards).”
The other problem has to do with time for training. Married and a mother of three kids, ages 8, 7 and 4, Jolene needs to get her two training sessions in daily while being a fulltime mother. “My first training session is from 5 to 7 a.m.,” she says. “The other day I couldn’t get in a second session because I had to take the kids somewhere.” Jolene remains very active with the MSU Alumni Association’s Chicago Alumni Club (chicagospartans.com), and tries to organize events for alumni living in the northern suburbs. She looks forward to the upcoming World Cup in April and the Olympic Trials in July.