Professional runner Sally Meyerhoff died Tuesday after her bike collided with a pickup truck in Maricopa, police said.
RIP Sally Meyerhoff
Meyerhoff apparently biked through the intersection of White and Parker Road and Maricopa-Casa Grande Highway around 1:30 p.m. heading south and collided with a truck heading east, according to Maricopa police spokeswoman LaTricia Woods.
The driver showed no signs of impairment, Woods said.
Meyerhoff, considered one of America’s top 10 marathon runners, was training for the 2012 Olympic Marathon Trials in Houston. She won the women’s section of the P.F. Chang’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona Marathon in January.
Tempe Marcos de Niza High track coach Anna Rodriguez, who ran on the same cross country and track teams with Meyerhoff at Phoenix Mountain Pointe High in the early 2000s, said she confirmed the death through Meyerhoff’s younger sister, Samantha, whom Rodriguez coached three years ago at Marcos de Niza.
“It’s shocking; I still don’t believe it happened,” Rodriguez said.
Meyerhoff, a 2002 Mountain Pointe graduate, was a seven-time state high school track and field champion in the 1600 and 3200 meters. She finished 12th at the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships in 2001.
She graduated in 2006 from Duke, where she was an NCAA All-American in cross country in 2004 and in track in 2006. She was the Atlantic Coast Conference cross-country champion in 2004.
In January, Meyerhoff celebrated a marathon championship in her home town, winning the P.F. Chang event in 2 hours, 35 minutes, 49 seconds. It qualified her for her second Olympics Trials in the marathon.
“This is what she dreamed about,” Rodriguez said. “She wanted to have a family and kids. But I kept telling her, ‘You’ll have that, too.’ She was so driven. Nothing was going to get in her way.” source US News
Arizona runner Sally Meyerhoff dies in accident
According to a report by The Arizona Republic, reigning P.F. Chang’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona Marathon women’s champion Sally Meyerhoff died on Tuesday in Maricopa, Ariz., after colliding with a pickup truck as she was riding a bicycle. She was 27.
A former standout at Duke University, Meyerhoff finished 15th at the NCAA Outdoor Championships and 18th at the USA Outdoor Championships in the 10,000 meters during her senior year.
While at Duke, Meyerhoff won several ECAC titles, which included the outdoor 5,000m in 2004, and the indoor 3,000m in 2005. She was an NCAA All-American in cross country in 2004 and in track in 2006. She graduated from Duke with a degree in history in 2007.
Meyerhoff was also a star as a prep athlete at Mountain Pointe High School in Phoenix, where she was a seven-time state champion in the 1,600m and 3,200m. In competing against many of the nation’s finest high school runners, Meyerhoff finished in twelfth place at the 2001 Foot Locker Cross Country Championships in Orlando, Fla.
In 2009, Meyerhoff won the USA 25 km Women’s Championship in 1:27:28, and most recently finished 13th (1:15:24) at the 2011 USA Half-Marathon Championships in Houston, Texas.
Meyerhoff’s personal best times included 33:03.19 for 10,000m, 1:12:52 for the half-marathon and 2:35:49 for the marathon from her P.F. Chang’s win in her hometown of Phoenix in January. Her performance qualified her for a second appearance at an Olympic Trials marathon.