Stephanie Brown Trafton

Stephanie Brown Trafton, née Stephanie Brown, (born December 1, 1979) is an American track and field athlete who won the discus throwing gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. She is thus one of only three American women to have ever won the event.

She was a somewhat unusual athlete in that she had become a two-time Olympian before she had competed at a World Championships in Athletics. Her first World Championships in 2009 ended with a sub-par performance in the discus final, but in 2011, she placed sixth. In 2012, she secured her third trip to the Olympics, after a definitive performance at that year's American Olympic trials. Still, the best-performing American of 2012 finished off the medals podium in London in seventh place.

Pre-Olympic career Brown Trafton has said she was inspired to become an Olympian as a 4-year-old watching Mary Lou Retton perform in the 1984 Summer Olympics. After a youth of attempting several different sports, she eventually divided her time between athletics and basketball. She competed in the discus and shot put at Arroyo Grande High School, and was the CIF California State Meet high school champion in shot put in 1996. After placing second in 1997, she recaptured the California shot put title in 1998. At the same meet, she added the California discus title to her resume. As of 2008, her throw to secure victory remains one of the 10 best American high school discus throws in history.

2004 Olympics Brown Trafton competed in the 2004 Olympic Trials in Sacramento, California in both the shot put and the discus throw. Her best throw coming into the discus competition was 192 feet. In the first throw of the discus final, she threw a 9-foot personal best of 201 feet 3 inches, surpassing the international A-standard mark, and qualified for her first Olympic team.

In August 2004, Brown Trafton competed at the Athens Games, and her best mark in the qualifying round failed to advance her to the finals. She placed 22nd with a throw of 192 feet even (58.54 m), She began 2008 with a personal best that was unchanged from 2004. However, she improved that mark in March, April and May 2008. Coming into the Beijing Olympics, her personal best was , achieved at the Hartnell Throwers Meet in Salinas, California. Before this year I never really dreamed I could throw over 210 [feet]. Now, I want to hit at least 64 meters every time Brown Trafton in May 2008 and a "field filler more than a medal contender", a radically improved Brown Trafton actually came to Beijing with a reasonable possibility of winning. She had executed the second-best throw posted in the sport in 2008. And she had progressively upped her personal best by over 4 m across several meets during the 2008 season. She threw into the net on her second and third throws, then posted a 191 feet 7 inches (58.39) and a 201 feet 1 inch (61.30). It was also the United States' first track and field gold medal of the 2008 Olympics, after a few initial days of failure. I want to meet Mary Lou Retton. Please, somebody hook me up. I have to meet Mary Lou. She was my idol. I had a leotard just like hers. request after winning gold It was the fourth medal in American history, behind Leslie Deniz' silver won at the politically boycotted 1984 Summer Olympics. Additionally, it was the first American medal in the sport won outside the city of Los Angeles since Copeland's silver medal in Amsterdam.

Global perspective Despite the significance of the victory to the US Track and Field program, Brown Trafton's winning distance of caused one track and field reporter to label Beijing a "low-standard competition". Nor was it an Olympic record, as Copeland's gold had been in 1932. It failed to approach Gabriele Reinsch's 1988 world record of . In fact, not only was Leslie Deniz' 24-year-old silver medal-winning throw longer than any throw of the 2008 Olympics, but no gold medalist since Lia Manoliu in the 1968 games had posted a shorter winning distance. Only 2 of the 12 finalists at the Beijing Olympics had a personal best under Brown Trafton's winning throw, and the average personal best of the field was 219 feet even (66.75 m). However, she was peaking when most of the field was in personal decline. When viewed against the prism of 2008-only performances, the only members of the field other than Brown Trafton to better the winning mark were Aretha Thurmond, Nicoleta Grasu and Yarelis Barrios.

Personal life Unlike many 21st-century American Olympians, Brown Trafton had a day job as she prepared for the Beijing Games. Using skills rooted in her undergraduate degree from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, she is the Director of Operations for Track & Field and Cross Country sports at California State University, Sacramento, and she worked as a computer-assisted designer for an environmental consulting firm in Sacramento, California called Sycamore Environmental Consultants, Inc.

Upon returning to her residence in Galt, California after her gold medal performance, Brown Trafton was presented with the key to the City of Galt by Mayor Andrew Meredith.

She and her husband are both recreational hunters. She quipped to reporters that the downside of the Beijing Olympics was that they occurred just as hunting season opened in California.

In 2008 she won the Jesse Owens Award, USATF's highest award to the Athlete of the Year.

2012 Olympics

Brown Trafton confirmed her intention to compete in the 2012 Summer Olympics immediately after winning in Beijing. and as a result she qualified for the 2009 World Championships in Athletics where she qualified for the finals but finished in last place in the finals with her lone legal throw.

In 2011, she repeated her national championship which again qualified her for the 2011 World Championships in Athletics. Again making the final, she finished 5th overall.

Her 2012 season showed continued improvement in an Olympic year. On May 4, she beat Suzy Powell-Roos's American record by 3 inches, throwing at the Altius TC Throwdown in Maui, Hawaii (the same place where Powell-Roos had set the previous record). That week she was named the USATF Athlete of the Week for the first time.

At the 2012 United States Olympic Trials, the preliminary round was held in rainy conditions that were difficult for all competitors. Brown Trafton fell twice in the ring, her final attempt finally assuring her a spot in the finals, though her off-balance second attempt was measured and proved to be sufficient. Under better conditions in the final, she easily outdistanced the field, leading from the first attempt and ultimately throwing almost 3 meters past second place Aretha Thurmond's best throw.

At the 2012 Olympics themselves, she originally finished in eighth place, but she officially moved into seventh when the original silver medalist, Darya Pishchalnikova, was disqualified for doping. Her longest throw in London was 63.01, well back from Sandra Perković's winning 69.11.