By GREG BISHOP SUMNER, Wash. — Melanie Roach is a former gymnast who owns a gymnastics facility. Her husband is a state legislator. At 33, she is the mother of three young children, including 5-year-old Drew, who is autistic. And she can lift 238 pounds over her head.
All of which makes her one of America’s most unlikely Olympic hopefuls.
For a start, Roach, who is 5 feet 1 inch and 117 pounds, looks nothing like a weight lifter. She was a gymnast until 10 years ago, when she left behind a middling career, took up weight lifting and in 1998 set an unofficial world record by lifting twice her body weight, a first for an American woman.
But she hyperextended her right elbow four months before the world championships in 1999 and had a herniated disk in her back eight weeks before the Olympic trials in 2000. She attempted to compete despite the injury, only to end up crying in the stands.
The back injury bothered her for seven years — through three pregnancies and three times as many comeback attempts.
“She rose to greatness so quickly, and then all of a sudden it was over,” said Roach’s training partner Alexis Reed. “You almost asked yourself, a year or two later, ‘Did that really happen?’ ”
The problems she encountered in competition were nothing compared with the challenge she confronted with Drew after his autism was diagnosed in 2005. Roach said she was preoccupied with everything he would never be able to do — school dances, church missions, college classes. He did not have bad days; he had bad weeks, bad months, filled with relentless tantrums.
“It was literally in a week my life changed,” Roach said. “I went into depression. I went through a mourning process. Almost like I lost a child.”
She said she would kneel at his bedside every night, praying he would get better.
In December 2005, Roach, a Mormon, went to see her bishop. “This is not what I signed up for,” she said.
“This is exactly what you signed up for,” he replied. That message not only changed her outlook about Drew, it changed her outlook about weight lifting.
“She learned that no matter how much money and time she put into it, she couldn’t change the outcome,” said her husband, Dan. “That has really helped with lifting. In the end, it’s the same concept.”
The family spent $25,000 on specialized therapy for Drew, and he has shown improvement. The family developed routines and safeguards. Every door, pantry and bedroom in their house is locked, even from the inside. They cut gluten from his diet, calming his demeanor and increasing his comprehension.
They do not watch television in the morning, so Drew can get ready for school without distraction. From 1 a.m. to 4 a.m., Dan takes care of Drew, when he often throws what the family calls parties, jumping on the bed, opening and shutting the bedroom door 20 times, breaking into fits of giggles.
“Still, Drew isn’t able to come up and tell me how his day is,” Roach said. “There will always be a part of him I cannot get to.”
Each morning when Drew boards the bus, Roach looks him in the eye and says goodbye. She makes eye contact and says, “I’m waiting.” “I love you,” Drew says back.
As much as Drew helped his mother learn to enjoy weight lifting, the constant movement of the complex family helps him, too. Drew used to throw fits when confronted with new environments, like when they turned left at a certain stoplight instead of right toward his grandmother’s house.
But autism is a challenge they will always confront, long after the Olympics. While cleaning out Dan’s office last month, Drew lay on the ground. “No tantrums,” his mother said firmly.
“No tantrums! No tantrums!” Drew screamed.
“Drew’s disability grounds them for life with other people who have challenges that are insurmountable,” Dan’s mother, Pam Roach, said. “You can’t surmount autism. You can learn to live with it.”
Roach trains for the Olympics in her gymnastics facility, a converted day-care center now filled with a symphony of barbell clangs and grunts. She made the transition from gymnastics into weight lifting in quick fashion. Guided by a coach, John Thrush, who trained elite prospects in his garage, Roach, then Melanie Kosoff, won her first national championship in 1997.
She met Dan in September 1998, and they married six months later. During the courtship, they traveled to Finland for the world championships. Melanie needed to complete one lift for a bronze medal, but “bombed out” on the platform, the pressure of meeting expectations heavier than the weight itself. After she lost, Dan told her that he lost his first election by 300 votes, or one-half of 1 percent.
On the streets of Finland, they wondered where everything went wrong. “And it didn’t get better, unfortunately,” Melanie said. “That was the beginning of the snowball effect.”
The first comeback, in 2003, lasted seven months before the back pain returned. She describes it as “way past 10,” worse than childbirth, and she notes she had her three kids naturally, at home.
“The best way to put it is as volatile as you can imagine,” said Greg Summers, Roach’s chiropractor. “I see four to five herniated disks a week, and hers is the worst I have ever seen.”
During long evenings Roach spent icing in the bathtub, she and Dan talked often about retiring for good. Even when she returned to the national team, she considered giving up her spot.
Unable to stand up straight, spending days at a time in bed, she called Summers in desperation.
Other doctors told her she risked serious injury, said that she could end up in a wheelchair. “Most orthopedic surgeons would cringe at the fact she was doing anything, let alone weight lifting,” Summers said.
At the world championships in October 2006, Roach finally told the team doctor about the herniated disk and three fragments imbedded in the nerve. The doctor recommended a surgeon in Los Angeles.
Five days after surgery, Roach was lifting weights without bending her back. Seven months later, she won her seventh national championship.
She later won a bronze medal at the Pan American Games and regained her No. 1 ranking among United States lifters.
“Amazing,” Dan Roach said. “We literally went from the world championships to the operating table and back in less than a year.”
But when would Melanie Roach enjoy it?
Back in the gym, with a poster from the Finland flameout and a Beijing T-shirt hanging from the wall, Roach lifted bars bent with colored plates while the song “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie blasted through her earphones.
“Weight lifting is the easiest part of my day,” she said.
Thrush can tell immediately how well Roach is balancing the complexities of her life. He said he knew Roach was struggling with the pressure at the national championships in March, when she successfully lifted only two of six attempts. To qualify for Beijing, she must finish fourth or better in the 53-kilogram weight class at the Olympic trials in Atlanta on May 17.
“You’ll have an opportunity to be an average, everyday woman after August,” Thrush said he tells Roach when she seems distracted. “You need to be selfish now.”
Team Roach marches on through a life that Dan Roach described as “organized chaos.” Bonnie Kosoff, Melanie’s mother, moved in recently to take care of the children. Summers and Thrush travel to events.
“You know how they say it takes a village to raise a child?” Kosoff said. “Well, it takes a village to get someone to the Olympics, too.”
The changed outlook remains. Had Roach gone to the Olympics in 2000, she said, she would not have three kids or the business. Had there been no Drew, she may never have learned what Thrush tried to teach her all along — the concept of slow and small but steady and incremental progress.
But the biggest change that Drew inspired was in Roach, the athlete. She now enjoys the Olympic quest, 14 years after it started.
Summers, the chiropractor, said he first noticed the difference at an airport recently. Roach had been stopped by security and told she could not proceed with the fingernail polish in her carry-on. She stopped, smiled, propped up her feet and applied a fresh coat.
Make sure you also watch the video that is attached to the article. Honestly, Melanie is just an amazing person. She's a mom of 3, including one boy with autism, a business owner, and a badass weightlifter who I hope will get a chance at an olympic medal.
Roach, Haworth top US Olympic women's weightlifting
By PAUL NEWBERRY, AP National WriterSat May 17, 6:09 PM ET
Melanie Roach was supposed to make her first Olympic team in 2000.
Eight years later, she could truly appreciate the thrill.
The 33-year-old mother of three finally fulfilled her Olympic dream Saturday, having overcome the back injury that ruined her expected trip to Sydney.
Roach was the top-rated lifter at the U.S. weightlifting trials, claiming one of four female spots allotted to the Americans. She'll be joined in Beijing by Carissa Gump, Natalie Woolfolk and third-time Olympian Cheryl Haworth.
"This is far better than anything I expected," Roach said. "If I had made the team in 2000, I wouldn't appreciate it nearly as much as I do now."
The three-member U.S. men's team also was decided Saturday at Georgia Tech. Kendrick Farris was the top-rated qualifier, followed by Chad Vaughn and Casey Burgener. Woolfolk and Burgener will be heading to Beijing as a couple; they are engaged and planning to get married in November.
Roach's comeback was even more remarkable considering she quit the sport for five years to start a family. When she decided to start lifting again, the pain returned, too, forcing her to undergo surgery in the fall of 2006 shortly after she claimed her sixth national title.
She hooked up with Dr. Robert Bray in Los Angeles, who was performing a procedure known as microdiscectomy that reduced the recovery time. He removed three fingernail-size fragments from her spine, and Roach was up and walking as soon as the anesthesia wore off.
"I knew right away that I was better," she remembered.
Bray surprised Roach by flying across the country to see her lock up a spot on the Olympic team. He walked up from behind and tapped her on the shoulder while she was celebrating in the warmup area.
"Thank you so much, Dr. Bray. You did an amazing job," said John Thrush, Roach's one and only coach since the former gymnast began lifting in 1994.
"When you're working with someone who has that much heart, it makes it easy," Bray replied.
The 117-pound Roach made all three of her lifts in the snatch, the heaviest at just over 178 pounds. As she held the bar above her head, she screamed in delight. After dropping it to the podium, she clapped her chalk-covered hands, threw both arms in the air and bounced off the stage.
She went to the clean and jerk merely having to avoid a total meltdown, and it quickly became apparent Roach wasn't going to let this opportunity get away. She lifted nearly 229 pounds with ease, then locked up her spot by hoisting just under 240 pounds on her second attempt.
Roach let out a yell while posing with the bar above her ahead, realizing this wouldn't be a repeat of 2000. She failed on her final attempt at 244 pounds, but it didn't matter.
"I really wanted this. I really wanted to be on the Olympic team," Roach said. "It's just an amazing day. I'm so excited."
Haworth was the face of American weightlifting when the sport made its Olympic debut at Sydney, where she won a bronze medal.
She's undergone her own trials since then, including major surgery in 2003 after blowing out her elbow, a slipped disk in her back, the embarrassment of a drunken-driving arrest in her hometown of Savannah, Ga., and a couple of coaching changes.
Haworth, who finished sixth at Athens, claimed the final spot on the U.S. team, but she's planning to make a run at another medal in Beijing.
"I'm ranked No. 4 but it doesn't matter at this point," she said. "We're all going to China."
The 25-year-old Haworth easily made all three of her snatches, and needed only one clean and jerk attempt to secure her place on the team.
"I'm really sort of getting my vengeance now," she said with a smile. "I'm ready to get really strong and go compete the way I know how. The last two years, I didn't because I was so injured. My goal is to stay healthy and go get a medal. If I stay healthy, I won't have any trouble at all."
Farris and Vaughn dominated the men's competition, with the main battle for the final spot. Burgener took it with a clean and jerk of 493 pounds on his next-to-last attempt. He fell over backward on the stage in jubilation.
"It was just a surge of energy," Burgener said. "I can't put it into words. It was like every surge of emotion you can feel all coming down at once."
No one was more relieved that Woolfolk, watching in the crowd with her spot on the team secure.
"It would have been completely bittersweet if I had made it and he didn't," Woolfolk said. "I would have been heartbroken."
Burgener's spot is not yet official, but U.S. officials were told this week they would get a third man because of doping cases involving other countries.
For Roach, the hard part is over. She would love to win an Olympic medal, but just making it to Beijing was her main goal.
Afterward, she savored the moment with her husband and their three young children, including 5-year-old Drew, who is autistic. They all made the trip from Bonney Lake, Wash.
"I'm really proud of my mom for making the Olympics," said 7-year-old Ethan, who will accompany her to China.
Three-year-old Camille jumped into the conversation.
"I am going to the Olympics, too," she said.
Actually, she's not, which Ethan was quick to point out.
"Yes I am," insisted Camille, who then gave her big brother a punch to the chest.
Get ready, Olympics. Team Roach is heading your way — eight years behind schedule.
Melanie Roach
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