Eight years after suffering a knee injury that prevented her from competing in the 1996 U.S. Track and Field Olympic Trials and four years after a fourth place finish at the 2000 event cost her a trip to the Sydney Summer Games, Tiffany Lott-Hogan finally earned her first Olympic berth this summer.
The 29-year-old former BYU track star and current BYU assistant coach finished second in the 2004 trials, winning one of three spots for U.S. athletes to participate in the women's heptathlon.
"I can't even find words for it," she said of making the team. "It is pure excitement."
She recalled the heartbreak of just missing that chance during the 2000 trials. She had finished the first day of competition in third place — which would have assured her a spot on the team — but faltered in the final event, the 800-meter run, and finished one spot away from qualifying for Sydney.
She said by the end of the event, her hardest, she knew it was over. "I knew I hadn't made the team."
"They didn't even have to flash the results. I started crying. . . . I did not stop crying until I went to bed that night. In my mind that was my last year to run."
But her husband, Brent, offered hope. He encouraged her to look toward 2004.
First, however, the couple had something more important to do. Sister Lott-Hogan took a year off and the couple started a family; their son, Keplar, was born in 2001.
It wasn't easy getting back into shape after the birth of her son, but the two-time NCAA heptathlon champion knew, with sacrifice, it was possible. In 2003 she won the Pan American Games gold medal.
"I always set goals," she said. "The main one up to the trials was to make the (Olympic) team. Then I made the team, so I set some more goals."
Now Sister Lott-Hogan, a member of the Grove Ward, Pleasant Grove Utah Stake, is hoping for a top 10 finish in Athens.
Participating in the Olympic Games is a "culmination of a life-long dream," she said.
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