Giving It Her Best Shot, Ramona Pagel Ends Up a Winner

Maybe more of us should see a shotputter cry. Maybe if we could, we would get it out of our heads that any woman who heaves a 16-pound steel ball must have muscles made by DuPont and a voice like Robert Mitchum’s and the disposition of a truck driver who just got served a cold bowl of chili.

Maybe more of us should see a shotputter laugh, too. Maybe more people should have been here Saturday to see the girl with the gold curls who crossed a schoolyard lawn with a carefree stroll, clutching a bouquet of flowers, smiling a cheerful smile, a definite skip in her step, content in the knowledge that she has qualified for the U.S. Olympic track team in not one but two events, the shotput and discus, having won the shotput competition Saturday after placing second in the discus on Thursday.

This makes her every bit as genuine an Olympian as Florence or Jackie or Mary or any other wonder woman walking by.

Maybe more people should be aware of what someone like Ramona Pagel has to endure during the course of a typical day--up by 6:30 a.m. to teach a class at the San Diego School of Sports Medicine, then out training during every spare hour, not only throwing and lifting but running and jumping, keeping a flat-tummied 190-pound body in shape, then juggling a home and a world-class athlete’s demanding travel schedule, with virtually none of the financial support the glamour-event athletes get. No money. No endorsements. No magazine covers. No talk shows.

That’s the least she must bear.

“There’s also that general consensus that, you know, you live in the weight room, and eat, and lift weights, and drink beer, and then you go throw, and that’s how you train,” Pagel said. “I had a beer the other day, and the last one I had before that was on New Year’s Eve.”

If her amateur standing could stand it, Pagel would be perfect for a Miller Lite ad. She is in a unique profession, she’s every bit as athletic as the other jocks and jokers they use, and she is living proof that a beer drinker doesn’t have to be built like Greg Luzinski. Pagel’s 5-foot 11-inch frame is firm, not flabby. She is more than a muscleperson, a strongwoman. She’s an athlete.

She’s also just a woman. She aches just like a woman and breaks just like a woman. She would still be a woman if she were twice the size and half as feminine, but the world remains full of dumbbells who don’t know how to deal with women who hoist barbells.

“This person comes up to me the other day and says, ‘You sure don’t look like a shotputter.’ He meant that to be so, so flattering,” Pagel said. “I mean, is that a backhanded compliment or what?”

Imagine what Maren Seidler had to withstand when she was the best American shotputter there was. Seidler was considerably larger than Pagel. Imagine a world in which ignorant people disregard your capacity for feeling, for emotion, and mock your livelihood as though sprinters are ballerinas and shotputters are background scenery. It’s like Tom Hanks discovered in that movie: Sometimes, it ain’t easy being big.

Pagel, as a fitness instructor, specializes in stomach muscles. Her own body fat is around 12%. There are slender movie starlets who wish they could say as much.

Just as with Bob and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Pagel, 26, is coached and trained by her husband, Kent, who coaches track at Mesa College and works at a parcel company to help pay the way.

After marrying him during a semester break at Cal State Long Beach, Pagel made the 1984 Olympic team in the shotput while she and her husband were getting by on $500-$600 a month in a one-bedroom apartment, eating tuna casseroles and wondering where the money would come from to fix the car. Carl Lewis, around this time, was shopping for crystal vases, and Mary Lou Retton was picking out Corvettes.

The daughter of a German-born baker, Ramona Ebert wanted to compete in track--and on the track, as a hurdler--at Schurr High School in Montebello, but the drawback to that was, there was no women’s team. She and several friends went to the board of education members and got them to correct that.

It was around this time that Kent started calling her “Minnie Mouse,” an unlikely nickname for a shotputter if ever there was one, but one that has stuck to this day. Hang around the field events long enough and you will hear anybody familiar with the leader is calling her Minnie and nothing else.

“Mo-nee” was what Ramona’s father called her when she and Kent Pagel first met, but Kent misunderstood the German accent, and before long, his date was walking alongside him carrying a brand new Minnie Mouse shopping bag.

They are still side by side, still wondering if The Athletic Congress ever intends to get behind all its athletes, still wondering if an Olympic job-opportunity problem ever intends to help anybody find jobs--”In 2 1/2 years, I’ve had two interviews,” Pagel said--and still thankful that at least the Mazda Track Club came through with some bucks.

Ramona is so exasperated with the stereotyping attached to anyone with a degree in physical education, she’s thinking of pursuing a business degree, just to be taken more seriously.

It hurts. You can hurt a shotputter. They’re flesh and blood. If you cut them, they bleed. Ramona Pagel is a champion who has broken the American outdoor record eight times and indoor record four times, yet often feels like an interloper on her own Olympic team.

“They want to support the people who have the biggest names. But if they’re really interested in increasing the interest and improving the talent in the entire sport of track and field, they need to support everybody, from the famous people to the women’s javelin throwers. One athlete works as hard as another, for the exact same cause. It’s not just somebody handing you money and saying, ‘Here.’ It’s somebody handing you money and saying, ‘We have confidence in you. You’re representing us. We’re all in it together.”’

Mac Wilkins once won a gold medal in the discus and said he did it for himself, not for America or anyone or anything else, because he had done it on his own, with no one else’s help. Pagel certainly understood that, and nodded. It took a long pause before she could respond. She was still smiling, but had to bite her lower lip. It hurt even to think about it.

“I think everybody wants somebody’s help,” she finally said, “but the thing that really keeps them going is that one-on-one support that you get from family members, friends, people where you’re working.”

Her voice cracked. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“You know, before I left to come here, everybody where I work got together and threw a party, gave me donations and stuff, and cheered for me. This was before I even made the team. They had confidence in me.”

She wiped her eyes.

“It was a great experience. I think that’s what they mean when they say, ‘You did it for America.’ It’s those people you’re doing it for. The people who believe in you.”