Injury opens door to change, triathlete thinking Olympic medal

A year ago, Sarah Groff couldn’t run or cycle, and when she walked, she was in extreme pain. Her triathlon career was on hold, and her Olympic dreams were on the back burner.

Groff sought comfort from her older brother, Adam, who typically isn’t short on words of encouragement. His message was simple, yet insightful. “He told me that this injury was going to actually make me a better athlete,” Groff said. “And he was absolutely right.”

Re-fracturing her sacrum last November in a bike crash prompted Groff to overhaul her running technique, and increased efficiency in a more graceful stride has created so much confidence, she thinks she could be in contention for a medal at the 2012 London Games.

The first U.S. woman to record a podium finish in the world championship series, Groff, 30, of Hanover, N.H., placed third in triathlon’s top circuit, with six top-10 international showings this season. She was seventh at the elite sprint world championships in August, and earlier that month, she qualified for her first Olympics – American Gwen Jorgensen also secured an Olympic berth – with a seventh-place finish at a WCS event in London.

Quite a turnaround from March 2010, when Groff, who narrowly missed an Olympic spot in 2008, cracked her sacrum, a triangle-shaped bone composed of five fused vertebrae in the lower back, while biking to a run workout. After she broke it again, she was sidelined for two months, and it wasn’t until February that doctors cleared her to resume a training regimen of six hours a day – a morning swim, then a midday bike, then an afternoon run.

“It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but I just landed the wrong way,” said Groff, who was 20th in the world last year, when she was runner-up to Boulder resident Laura Bennett at the USA Triathlon elite national championships. “Crashing is part of the sport. Normally, you expect to do it in a race or under a higher-pressure situation.”

As Groff returned to action in March, she quickly discovered that her running style “was completely messed up.” Her new coach, Darren Smith, who instructs her in the summer in Davos, Switzerland, and in the winter in Canberra, Australia, taught her “how to run in a balanced way,” she said. “I didn’t have much margin for error, so I had to do everything right. I had to do the rehab right. I had to basically learn how to run again from scratch.”

There’s now an “increased focus on improving my core strength,” added Groff, the 2007 aquathlon world champion who ran cross country in high school and swam at Division III Middlebury before starting triathlon in 2005. She added that “it took a lot of patience and a lot of hard work, but I think that focus on the minutiae is paying off.” Plus, she conceded, “I’m now running better than I ever have before.”

With an Olympic ticket in the bag, Groff recently went out to dinner in a Wonder Woman costume, having lost a bet to a friend. “I honor my bets,” Groff said with a laugh. She’ll be serious about reaching the podium in London – Colorado graduate Susan Williams is the only American triathlete to claim an Olympic medal, a bronze in 2004.

“I’m going to do everything that I can to be in that position next year,” Groff said.

Contact Brian Gomez: 719-636-0256 or brian.gomez@gazette.com. Twitter: @gazetteolympics. Facebook: Brian Gomez. For more Olympic coverage, visit www.gazette.com/olympics