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Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette photos Dwight Conklin, 70, of Stoddard, N.H., heads down the runway en route to gold in the pole vault yesterday at Carnegie Mellon University. Click photo for larger image. 
Senior Olympics Coverage:
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Today, he's a wiry 70-year-old who just last week discovered what it feels like to get flung; he finally got the fiberglass pole to bend. Suddenly aloft, he felt that sweet give, the momentary suspension of the body when the pole bends to your energy. It's the sling shot to the pebble, the springboard to the diver -- the transfer of kinetic to potential energy.
"When it happened," said Conklin, imitating his reaction in the lobby of his Oakland dorm by leaping into the air with his arms raised, "I said, 'Well son of a gun!' So that's how it feels.' " He laughed. "I just hope I can do it again."
Yesterday, Conklin, of New Hampshire, vaulted 9 feet to win the event for men aged 70-74 at the Summer National Senior Games. He actually cleared 10 feet, but glanced the crossbar on the way over, bringing it down.
Before the event, at Gesling Stadium at Carnegie Mellon University, he caught up with two old friends -- pole vaulters he has seen at Senior Olympics and Masters events over the years.
Roger Chassay of Alabama is still in the 65-69 age group.
"You guys moved up," he told Conklin and Duane Rykhus of South Dakota, and they laughed, trading aches-and-pain updates.
"Roger and I met at the Orlando games in '99," said Conklin.
"That's when I hurt my foot. Roger and a friend of his beat me."
"I still wonder how I could beat a guy with a bad foot only by this much," said Chassay, holding his hands less than a foot apart.
Conklin returned to pole vaulting six years ago, after a 40-year hiatus. From the rustic vaulting at that summer camp, he had become a sixth-grader on the junior-varsity team. He vaulted in high school and in college at Rutgers University. He was inspired by his mother, who, when her name was Mary Washburn, won a silver medal in the 400 relay at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam.
In this improbable-looking sport, you plant the pole after a brief sprint and take one step into the air, lifting up, swinging into an inverted C, ideally upside down, landing on a heavy foam pad.
The feeling you get, he said "is kind of a high," a combination of activities he has loved in his life -- tree-climbing, sailing, flying and acrobatics.
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| Pole-vaulter Dwight "Deke" Conklin clears nine feet to win a gold in the Senior Olympics. "well, son of a gun! So that's how it feels," he exclaimed. Click photo for larger image. |
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He retired after 25 years of coaching at a Boston high school in 1995 and spent the next 21/2 years sailing with his wife, Marsha, from New England to Venezuela and back.
In 1998, they moved into his mother's summer cottage in Stoddard, N.H. There, his tennis partner suggested he go out for the Granite State senior games.
"I borrowed a pole from a guy. The competition wasn't very good. I did 7 feet, a little less than my best in sixth grade. But it felt nice and easy. I still liked it. It got my enthusiasm going."
He qualified for the Senior Olympics in 1999, where, with an injured foot, he took fourth at 9 feet. In 2001, he had a pulled hamstring and couldn't compete.
In 2002, he won the national Masters outdoor championships and, in 2003, he won the Master's long jump. That same year, he won the pole vault.
"The thing I've been most happy about is that when I got back into it, I went from 7 feet to 10 pretty quickly and did 10 in three competitions. If I can keep bending the pole, who knows, maybe I can set a world record."
NOTES -- Edwin Torres, of Bethel Park, and a member of the UMPC Cycling Performance Team, won the 40K cycling road race in the 55-59 age group. He also won the 20K Wednesday. Torres was a member of the Puerto Rican team at the 1968 Olympics. ... There was a crash between two cyclists at the end of the race. They were taken to a hospital and released after treatment.
