All right, good evening and welcome to another episode of the home stretch podcast with Adrian Durant. This evening we have another special guest, Jamie Nianto.

Hello, hello.

Thanks for joining us and Ashley. Thanks for joining us again as well.

For those of you just joining us, the home stretch podcast will be talked to Olympic caliber world championship caliber athletes and we hear about their stories directly from them about how they achieve success and all the things they've had to overcome.

We could take a little bit from their stories and apply it to our own lives. So Jamie, I've been wanting to talk to you for a while. I think you have a very unique and special story and I'm looking forward to getting into it.

So Jamie was an Olympic high jumper pan-m civil medalist, 2004 and 2012 US Olympic trials champion as well as a 2003 outdoor champion in a high jump with a personal best of 2.30 meters.

Yeah, I'm incorrect. He won USA's with 2.30 meters. Personal best is 2,3,4, 7 feet, 8 inches. Crazy. And he did that at a 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. So pretty cool, pretty cool.

Jamie, welcome. Tell us how you got started in the sport.

Oh, yeah, that's a good story. So in 1993, I was a junior in high school. So I'm an agent myself here. So I went out for the basketball team and I had a bad grade in geometry.

And at the time, if you had a bad grade in your junior, you couldn't play on the basketball team. It was like an automatic cut. So I got cut from the basketball team. I was pretty upset about it. And the previous year, I had played football and basketball.

I had to do another sport that year, but I didn't play football that year. I was like, I played football the year before, but it just, it just wasn't me. I didn't, I grew up in Sacramento when it was really hot. I just was like, yo, being an eye, it was coach yelling at me all day and burning up in this Sacramento. He does not fun.

So I led football and just thought I'd concentrate on basketball. Well, basketball didn't got cut. So now it's like, well, what am I going to do? So a friend of mine said, hey, Jamie, want you to come out for track and feel.

And I was like, no, I don't like running at all. So he said, well, no, you can do different events. He said, you can try to high jump work on your jumping ability.

And then next year when you come back for basketball, you're ducking on everybody. I was like, okay, that sounds like a good idea. So I did it. And I ended up making it to the state meet California state meet. It was me and two girls.

And I just said, man, I just fell in love with it. And I was like, this is, this is what I want to do. I'm going to do this again. Next year, I had a blast. And I did and continued on with it all into my career.

So I started in 1993 and I retired in 2013. So I had a 20 year career in track and field.

That's a, that's a, that's a strong career. And so from when you started in high school, it was all high jump. So you weren't subject to four by fours or any of that stuff.

Oh, yeah, no, I was, I wasn't. So I wasn't fast enough to where I was headed to be subject to four of our course. We had some pretty good sprinters on our team. But well, these they were better than me anyways.

But I did do the long jump, try to long jump, I tried to triple jump. I tried the 300 hurdles. I tried to 800. Just kind of trying to fill my way around because, you know, when you just get started, you don't know what you are good at or what you could be good at.

So I just thought, hey, somebody was like, hey, you should try the hurdles. You told them long, you probably do well. Okay, I'll try it. You know, I was like, oh, this is tough.

But I do feel like I had some skill in some of the other events. I just didn't have the love for the other events like I did for high jumping, I jumping just just

being a way that I really enjoy. And so you say you loved it. So at that point, did you start when you were in high school and you were doing you start getting better?

...