Sharrieffa Barksdale, a 1984 Olympian in the 400 hurdles, is training for a masters comeback with the avowed intent of making the 2008 U.S. Olympic team. Wow! The revelation comes in a long story published today in the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky, where Barksdale lives and trains. She is serious, saying: “I’m going to succeed because I’m bound and determined… My daughter, my son … they say, ‘Mommy, did you go work out today? You know you have to do it. You’ve got to make history.’ ”

Here are the salient sections of Mark Maloney’s impressive report:
Impossible is not in the vocabulary of this Lexington woman.
“I know I can do it,” she told herself. “Because I have the heart and the determination and the ability to do it.
“As I was jogging, I said, ‘Lord, if I make it for 45 minutes and do not quit, I am going to continue to work every single day.’ ”
She did, and she has.
Just as she did when she first qualified for an Olympics — in 1984!
If Barksdale, 44, makes it into the 2008 Beijing Games, the divorced mother of two — daughter Gentel, 11, and son Javarus, 7 — will then be 47. That, it is believed, would make her America’s oldest women’s track and field Olympic qualifier ever.
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At Tennessee, she became a conference and national open champion, NCAA and Pan American Games runner-up and American record-holder in the 400-meter hurdles (55.78 seconds).
She made it to the semifinals in that event at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games.
Val, diagnosed with cancer last April, continues to inspire Sharrieffa.
“He’s my motivation because I see him every day struggling with cancer,” she said. “He’s fighting it and fighting it and fighting it, and he’s strong. … I’m going to fight with him in terms of running this track.”
After retiring from competition after the 1988 Olympic Trials, Barksdale remained close to the sport.
In recent years, she has coached national junior teams at Kentucky State and as a volunteer assistant at Paul Dunbar High School, and she has officiated at local meets.
Judi Brown Clarke, the 1984 Olympic silver-medalist in the 400-meter hurdles, sees importance in Barksdale’s comeback — her image as a role model.
“How you exemplify not only athleticism, but the commitment, the denials you put yourself through in living a particular lifestyle,” Clarke said by phone from her home in Lansing, Mich. “If nothing else, it make her probably one of the greatest moms, that she can show her kids that, ‘You know what … it doesn’t matter what barrier’s in front of you. You’re going to figure out a way to manipulate it.’
“One of the barriers she has right now is age. She’s going to fall back on those hurdling skills to figure out, ‘How do I manage this barrier?’ And whether she makes a team or makes it to a level of elitism, that’s a byproduct. The journey is probably where she wins the most. She certainly will win respect.”
For the past four or five years, Barksdale had pondered a comeback.
The spark that moved her to act came last summer, when she was liaison for Team USA at the Junior Pan American Games in Canada.
“I was looking at the kids,” she said. “I’m like, ‘I know I can do this,’ because I was working out with them.”
At the national championships, she bumped into a teammate from the 1984 Olympics. She mentioned that she was itching to run.
Johnny Gray — four-time Olympian and American record-holder at 800 meters (1:42.60) — said that if she was serious, he would coach her.
His first workout for her was the moment-of-truth 45-minute jog.
Barksdale won’t be running hurdles. Instead, coach and runner considered the mile and 800-meter runs.
“As I watched her run, I realized that she just has those big muscles, and it just wouldn’t work in anything longer than the 800 meters,” said Gray, who was in Richmond for a clinic last month but who does most of his coaching by e-mail and phone from Thousand Oaks, Calif. “So we’re looking at 800, 400 and 200.”
Training by herself at a local gym or outdoors at Paul Dunbar, Barksdale had dropped nearly 50 pounds to 145 by New Year’s Day.
Gray plans to ease her into competition, first at the masters (40-and-over) level.
“Then, as she loses some of the unnecessary weight that she’s carrying now, with her determination and background as a world-class athlete, she can move up to an event to where she can perhaps be competitive in some of the weak events with the youngsters,” Gray said. “She may be able to go out there and steal a spot on the Olympic team.
“I know it’s asking a lot, but anything’s possible with her. If she can even make it to the Olympic Trials, that’s a feat that’s accomplished.”
…
Barksdale says she might be forty-something, but she thinks she looks thirty-something. And she feels twenty-something.
“If I don’t ever make it to the Olympics and I don’t succeed, as long as I know that I went out there and I gave 100 to 200 percent, that’s all I’m looking for,” she said. “But, see, I know what type of person I am. I’m going to succeed because I’m bound and determined.
“The only way I’ll be denied is if I get injured or if the good Lord takes me. Other than that, there’s no stopping Sharrieffa Barksdale.”
Coach and athlete have heard the whispers (and shouts): Are you two nuts?
Georgia Tech jumps and hurdles coach Nat Page, in town for the recent McCravy Memorial meet, was asked for his opinion.
Page was ranked among the world’s top 10 high-jumpers for three years (1979-81), earning a spot on the 1980 boycott-year Olympic team. He later earned a top-10 ranking in the intermediate hurdles (1990-92). His ex-wife, Merlene Ottey, is track’s ultimate age warrior, having won eight medals over the past seven Olympics (six for Jamaica, one for Slovenia).
At 45, she still competes.
“It’s possible, to a certain extent. To come back in any event, 40-and-up, is extremely tough,” Page said. “You kind of have to have everything going for you.
“One, you have to have kept yourself in excellent physical condition. Number two is having a good support cast around you — a trainer, a coach, a masseuse — and have the time to go ahead and give it everything you have.”
Clarke gives Barksdale two thumbs-up: “I’m so proud of her, and on so many levels. It’s not just competing, but … that you’re willing to put yourself out there, and that you’re willing to try. Whether she succeeds or fails, she’s already won.
“When you’ve got the fast-twitch muscle capacity, then that puts you at an elite level,” Clarke said. “And once you’re at an elite level, 80 percent of it has to do with heart.”
Gray, 45, ran national-level races until four years ago. Given Barksdale’s proven ability, he has no doubts that a comeback is realistic. He has her on a program that totals up to 8 miles a day. The rare speed workout is meant “to kind of wake up those quick-twitch fibers.”
Barksdale already would be a gold medalist if confidence were an event.
“I’ve been there, done that. And I know what it takes to make the team,” she said. “If I didn’t know what it took, I wouldn’t even attempt it.”
Barksdale’s first competition, the masters division of the Mason-Dixon Games 55-meter dash, is tentatively set for early March. She plans to step up outdoors to 200 and 400 in May.
“It’s a challenge, and I’m up for the challenge,” she said. “What is so great is that my children believe in me, and they’re here to support me.
“My daughter, my son … they say, ‘Mommy, did you go work out today? You know you have to do it. You’ve got to make history.'”
Me again:
Edwin Moses tried a comeback in his 40s and crashed-and-burned.
My hope is that SB rediscovers the fun in track and continues in masters even if she doesn’t make an Olympic Trials qualifying standard in 2008.