Sheena Tosta: A winning recap

By DAVE FAWCETT
For the Stafford County Sun
Published: August 27, 2008

WOODBRIDGE — Sheena Tosta wasn’t leaving the track after winning the silver medal last week in the 400-meter hurdles at the Beijing Olympics.
Not yet anyway. She’d overcome too much over a four-year span to make an early exit now.

Her biggest obstacle had been her disappointing fourth-place finish in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. It both motivated and haunted her as she tried to move on and stop fretting over how close she had come to winning a medal and yet still had come up short. But there were other obstacles she faced as well, including her preparation for the U.S. Olympic Trials in June.

She bounced from one training facility to another, including UCLA, where she competed as a collegian, and West L.A. College, where police had to escort she and her training partners off the premises. It wasn’t until April that she and her husband and coach Joseph found a facility in Chula Vista, California that wasn’t concerned about liability issues and let her train.

No, there was too much to celebrate right now.

So after a few moments of collecting herself after crossing the finish line on Aug. 20, Tosta breathed easy and decided it was time to share her joy with others.
Carrying an American flag that her agent Renaldo Nehemiah had handed to her from the stands inside National Stadium, Tosta took a victory lap that included stopping along the way to sign autographs and to shake hands with spectators.

Finally after 20 minutes, it was time to go.

The Gar-Field High School graduate had interviews to do and, if she was lucky, would try and get some sleep after the late-night race, but it was hard to walk away.

She was going to enjoy this moment, even if she had to squeeze every last second out of it before taking off.

“I was taking my time getting around the track,” Tosta said.

Four years ago in Athens, Tosta was a favorite to medal in the 400 hurdles, but a poor performance in the semifinals cost her a prime lane position for the
finals. Although she was one spot away from winning a bronze, Tosta was unsettled by the finish.
In Beijing, she had a rocky first-round run, finishing fifth in her heat (56.12), which she attributed to a “lack of focus and nerves.”

But Tosta rediscovered her focus for the semifinals and posted a time of 54.07 to reach the final as the top seed.
In the final, Tosta took an early lead but she said she “lost a bit of energy” down the stretch as Jamaica’s Melaine Walker won the gold with an Olympic-record time of 52.64.

Tosta, who finished with a time of 53.70, had no complaints.

“Overall, it was as good as I could have hoped,” Tosta said.

Although her event was over, Tosta was still in demand, doing a number of media interviews on little sleep. Tosta said she was running on adrenaline after going to bed at 4 a.m. and getting back up four hours later following the race.

“I wasn’t tired,” Tosta said.

By the next day, it was clear by listening to her voice that she was starting to come down.

“I’m so exhausted,” she said in a telephone interview while attending her awards ceremony where she officially received her silver medal.

Tosta said she hoped to do some sightseeing before leaving China on Sunday and heading home to California to finish out her track season.
She said she might try and come back to Virginia at Thanksgiving to visit her family, but it would depend on her schedule. Her mother and stepfather, who were in Beijing, live in Stafford.

At one point prior to the Olympic Trials, Tosta considered whether she would compete in another Olympic Games. But her performance in Beijing put that speculation to rest, as the 25-year-old will now set her sights on the 2012 Games in London.

It’d been a bumpy road for Tosta to get to this point, but nothing knocked her so off stride that she couldn’t recover.  Yes, the Athens experience rattled her enough that it wasn’t easy to shake off.

When asked at what point she felt like she had finally moved beyond Athens, Tosta paused before pointing to her performance in Monday’s semifinals. It was then that she had clearly learned her lesson from Athens.  She took no chances as she swiftly put herself in the best position possible to capture a medal and finally be able to say goodbye to her disappointment four years ago.

“It is something that I can now put behind me,” Tosta said. “That was the worst place finish for me. I am definitely no longer looking back at 2004.”
Dave Fawcett is the sports editor at Media General’s Potomac News in Woodbridge.