Can an Athlete With Type 1 Diabetes Make the Olympic Track Team?

You’ll want to be ready if you find yourself on the receiving end of a Kate Hall medicine ball toss.

I wasn’t. During a midday early May workout, Hall recruited me to catch her throws and roll the ball back to her. I moved to the middle of the infield at Fitzpatrick Stadium in Portland, Maine. From just inside the track, Hall sprang forward and heaved the 8-pound ball. Next thing I knew, the ball landed just in front of me, bounced, and crashed into my chest. It left a red mark on my sternum that lingered for a week.

I should have known better. Hall, age 22, is the national high school record-holder in the long jump, a two-time NCAA champion in the event, and this year’s national indoor titlist. Her long jump PR of 6.83 meters is best appreciated by unspooling a tape measure 22 feet, 5 inches and imagining how much of that distance you could cover after a 40-meter run-up. Hall is also an accomplished sprinter, with a 100-meter best of 11.30 and a runner-up finish at 60 meters in February’s indoor nationals.

The medicine ball tosses came at the end of a workout focusing on sprint starts; on some, she bolted from the blocks with such force that her grandfather, standing on the back of the blocks, was knocked off balance. So of course I should have braced myself when this exemplar of power sent a flying object my way.

Compete and win. That’s sports. No one cares about race medical confine etc in real athletics

If your health is compromised you cannot compete

If you are hurt and you cannot compete

If you are infirm. you cannot compete

Now of course. sex. Counts. Men and women are DIFFERENT.

YOU CAN HAVE WOMEN COMPETE IN MENS SPORTS. BUT NOT VICE VERSA.

JUST AS NO MAN -BORN AS SUCH - WILL EVER CARRY A BABY TO TERM

I despise clickbait headlines so here is the spoiler. Apparently, she can.

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There have also been equipment malfunctions. The insulin pump she used to wear was a pager-like device attached to her hip, with a tube that connected to a needle. “Whenever I tried to compete, the whole thing would rip off,” Hall says. She now wears an Omnipod, a 1.5-inch x 2-inch pump that she attaches to her triceps for three days at a time. A discreet glucose monitor she clips to her waistband sends blood sugar readings to her phone. (Before I knew about the set-up, I assumed Hall was checking Instagram when she immediately went to her phone between sprints.)

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Between technological advances and greater knowledge about managing her nutrition, Hall is now rarely out of commission because of diabetes. Track meets remain challenging, because the excitement of competition can spike her blood sugar levels. Hall tries to stay calm more than get psyched up for meets.

Hall uses her platform to speak regularly to other diabetics. “The message I’m trying to give is that type 1 diabetes doesn’t have to stop you from doing anything you want to do,” she says. “It doesn’t have to control you. You can control it.”

Kate Hall
Greta Rybus

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Indeed, Hall ascribes some of her success to diabetes. “My work ethic stems from being diagnosed when I was 10,” she says. “I’ve had to manage and control this disease from a very young age, and I wanted to do it all on my own.” The initial misdiagnosis contributed to Hall’s sense of self-sufficiency and her skepticism toward authority figures who don’t take her perspective into account. As a teen, Hall was home-schooled. While representing Lake Region High School, she was coached by Pribish and trained on her own, using the school’s track practices as a time to stretch and socialize.

Pribish’s and Hall’s origin story isn’t quite that of Alberto Salazar spotting a young Galen Rupp running laps at soccer practice, but it has the same element of chance. Hall pulled a hamstring sprinting at her seventh grade state meet. She went for physical therapy at a clinic in Windham, the nearest facility to her home. Pribish, now the owner of Momentum Performance and Wellness, in South Portland, was on hand during Hall’s last day of therapy. “I told her dad, ‘She’s not ready to go back to sprinting,’” Pribish says. “I told him the hamstring would tear again if she didn’t do some things differently.”

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