FEATURES

Mary Wineberg is driving in circles around the University of Cincinnati. Each lap is perhaps a quarter mile—a distance with which she’s thoroughly familiar—and she circles again and again looking for a spot. This morning the Colerain Township resident and UC grad is determined of two things: First, she will find convenient parking and avoid a long walk across campus; second, she is going to train hard today, and run like the Olympic athlete she intends to be.

At full sprint, Wineberg has the grace of a gazelle. She’s 5-foot-10 with muscular legs that twitch and slice the air with every step on the track. She’s training for the Olympic trials this summer in Eugene, Oregon, where she hopes to qualify for both the 400-meter run and the 4x400-meter relay at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. But right now, seated on a leather couch in the Richard E. Lindner Center, the long-limbed runner looks every bit like a model, with form-fitting black athletic gear, flawlessly painted nails, and a neat ponytail.

At 28, Wineberg is a self-described late bloomer. While she’s run competitively since high school and has trained post-collegiately for nearly six years, she’d never been a world-class runner. “I’m very uncoordinated,” she says. “My husband laughs at me when I shoot baskets, because if you saw me, you’d say, ‘I can’t believe she runs track.’”

Wineberg captured the international running world’s attention last September at one of the largest non-Olympic events in the world—the 2007 IAAF World Championships in Athletics in Osaka, Japan—as a 400-meter specialist with a lightning fast finish. She jokes that the media didn’t pay any attention to her because no one thought she’d make it past the first round. Not even her.

“Don’t expect to win,” she told herself. “This is your first outdoor world event. Just be satisfied with making it to the first round.”

But she advanced beyond the first and second rounds as one of two Americans to race in the women’s 400-meter finals. Wineberg finished eighth, but it was her performance in the relay that shocked everyone. Along with Allyson Felix and 2004 Olympic gold medalists Sanya Richards and “Dee Dee” Trotter, the team devastated the competition. It was Wineberg’s first gold medal.

“Hearing the national anthem and having a gold medal placed around my neck, tears started welling up in my eyes,” she says. “I began to believe that this is really possible.”

Wineberg, a Walnut Hills High graduate, still holds UC’s 400-meter indoor (55.54 seconds) and outdoor records (53.30), yet she never made it to an NCAA championship. Her husband, UC assistant track coach Chris Wineberg, says that while other athletes peak in high school and college, “she just keeps getting better and better.”

As the outdoor season begins this month, Wineberg’s goal is fierce: run at least two-seconds faster than her best time—a monumental feat. Her success last year led to Track & Field News ranking her fourth in the United States and eighth in the world for the 2007 season. Since only the top three qualify for the open 400-meter event, there is work to be done. But barring injury, she looks like a lock for the Olympic 400-meter relay. Wineberg trains four hours a day. The 400-meter run is an endurance sprint, which means Wineberg needs to improve those explosive first steps and train with “split 350s”—running 200 meters at full-tilt with a minute rest before running the last 150 meters all-out to the end.

“Some athletes change everything in an Olympic year,” she says. “My goal is not to do anything different—just better.”

Originally published in the April 2008 issue.