Frank Thomas

Wilkinson Notable Sports Figures
Chronology
1977 Born November 17 in Houston, Texas
1993 Begins diving in May
1995 Makes U.S. national diving team
1996 Begins attending the University of Texas
2000 Breaks her right foot in three places in a training accident
March 8
2000 Has surgery to repair broken foot November 14
2001 Graduates from the University of Texas in Austin in December
2002 Last year on U.S. national diving team
2002 Marries Eriek Hulseman September 7
in time for the Olympics, so a cast was put on and the
bones were allowed to fuse and heal just as they were.
This resulted in a knot of bone on the bottom of her foot
that felt, she said, like walking on a rock. The cast
stayed on until just weeks before the Olympic trials, but
Wilkinson used visualization and other dry-land practices
to stay in the best shape that she could.
Low Expectations
Despite Wilkinson’s impressive record, she was not a
favorite going into the 2000 Olympics even before she
broke her foot. The Chinese team had dominated the
event in the previous years, winning the gold in the platform
event in every Olympics since 1984. The two Chinese
competitors this year, 15-year-old Sang Xue and
16-year-old Li Na, were already international champions
and were heavily favored to win in Sydney as well.
Indeed, after the first round of the platform competition
Li was first and Sang was second in the standings.
Wilkinson was eighth, which was quite an accomplishment
considering her handicaps. To climb the 40 steps to
the top of the diving tower in Sydney, Wilkinson had to
wear a kayaker’s boot to protect her right foot. She was
limited in her selection of dives, since the lump of bone
on the bottom of her foot was extremely painful to run
on, which ruled out dives that required running starts.
“Do It for Hilary”
The final round of the platform diving event included
five dives by each of the qualifying athletes. Wilkinson
gave solid performances in her first two dives, but she
still trailed several other competitors. She then performed
a near-perfect third dive, a reverse two-and-ahalf
somersault tuck, which earned a score of 9.5 from
most of the judges. It would be the highest-scoring dive
of the night, and it moved her into the lead. The Chinese
divers could have come back to take the lead, but both of
them faltered: Li garnered average scores, fives and
sixes, while Sang did a belly flop and scored as low as
3.5. This was the opening that Wilkinson needed.
But Wilkinson’s fourth dive was an inward two-anda-half
somersault in the pike position, the dive that she
1764
Awards and Accomplishments
1995 HTH Classic, synchronized platform (with Patty Armstrong)
1995 U.S. National Outdoor Championships, synchronized platform
(with Patty Armstrong)
1996 U.S. National Indoor Championships, synchronized platform
(with Patty Armstrong)
1996 U.S. National Outdoor Championships, synchronized platform
and synchronized 3-meter springboard (with Patty Armstrong)
1997 U.S. National Outdoor Championships, platform and 3-meter
springboard
1997 World Championship Team Trials, platform
1997-98 Big XII Conference Championships, platform
1997, 1999 National Collegiate Athletic Association Championships,
platform
1998 U.S. National Indoor Championships, platform
1998 Goodwill Games, platform
1999 Big XII Conference Championships, platform and 3-meter
springboard
1999, 2002 U.S. National Outdoor Championships, platform
2000 All American-Austin Cup, 3-meter springboard
2000 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, platform
2000 Communidad de Madrid, platform and synchronized platform
(with Jenny Keim)
2000 U.S. National Outdoor Championships, platform and
synchronized platform (with Jenny Keim)
2000 Olympic gold medal, platform
2000 Named U.S. Diving Athlete of the Year
2000-01 Named Female Diver of the Year by the U.S. Olympic
Committee
had broken her foot practicing in March. It had made
her nervous ever since, and just that morning she had
done a poor job with it in the preliminary round. It was
also painful, since to take off she had to stand on her tiptoes
with much of her weight on the lump of fused bone
under her right foot. She would have substituted another
dive, but the rest of her dives required running starts.
As Wilkinson began climbing to the top of the platform,
Armstrong told her, “Do it for Hilary.” Hilary
Grivich was a former member of the University of Texas
diving team who had been killed in an automobile accident
three years earlier. “I’m thinking, ‘What is he trying
to do to me?’ Then, everything clicked,” Wilkinson
recalled to Linda Robertson of the Knight Ridder/Tribune
News Service. “I thought of all the kids on the team
who had written me good luck cards. The whole meet
wasn’t about winning anymore. It was about the journey.”
Wilkinson got to the top of the tower, recited her
favorite Bible verse—“I can do all things through
Christ, who strengthens me”—as she does before every
dive, and then did her inward two-and-a-half somersault
pike near perfectly, earning scores between 8.5 and 9.5.
Li recovered from her poor third dive to close to within
two points of Wilkinson, but in the end Li could not
overtake her. Wilkinson won the gold.
After the Olympics
Wilkinson thought about retiring after the 2000
Olympics, but she found that she missed the water and