OLYMPICS: Together, again

Weeks family gathers in Rio

By Donna Lampkin Stephens
Cabot Star-Herald

The Weeks twins are reunited this week in Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics.

Tori Weeks joined her parents, Brent and Amy, for the weekend flight to Brazil. The Cabot family arrived Sunday in time to see Tori's eight-minutes-older twin sister Lexi compete in the pole vault preliminaries this morning. The finals are set for Friday night.

"We're rooting for Team Lexi," Brent Weeks said last week.

This summer marked the first time the twins hadn't competed together.

"Obviously, I want to be there with her, but I'm not resentful of anything," Tori said last week. "I just want to be there with her. I'm not going to have the same experience she is, but being there and seeing all the best athletes in the world — for me just to go there, to experience the meet, just getting to watch it, is a big deal."

Brent Weeks reiterated Tori's attitude.

"She said, 'I don't want to beat her; I want to be with her,' which makes me get teary-eyed," he said. "She doesn't want to have the limelight. She wants to have the limelight with Lexi. It's been bittersweet."

The twins pushed each other throughout high school. Tori won the Class 7A state meet as a sophomore. Lexi took the Meet of Champs title. As a junior, Lexi won both. During their senior year, Tori set the national high school indoor record at 14 feet, 4 inches; Lexi hit 14-7 1-4 for the national outdoor record.

"In their senior year, Lexi set the indoor national record early on, but Tori came back and broke that record and beat it by 3-4 inch," said Morry Sanders, who has coached the twins since they were 13 at his Arkansas Vault Club in Black Springs. "Tori would get ahead a little while, then Lexi would come back. That's the way they were from the time they were sophomores on, leapfrogging each other. You knew once one got ahead, it wasn't going to last very long.

"It's a perfect storm, a perfect situation. These two girls are best friends and do everything together. They're super-competitive, but they thrive off each other. I want one of them to pull ahead because I know the other one is going to jump up with her real soon."

The trend from high school continued during their freshman year as Lexi won SEC and NCAA indoor and outdoor titles. Indoors, Tori was third in the SEC and sixth nationally; outdoors, she finished second in the SEC and 15th nationally.

Both are All-Americans.

"They had unbelievable freshman years," Sanders said. "Lexi was the first female to ever win both indoor and outdoor championships in the same year. Everybody right now is focused on Lexi, but Tori had a phenomenal year. Most freshmen don't have a year near what she did.

"It just so happens her sister is Lexi Weeks."

Lexi said the situation was sometimes difficult.

"Us being twins, everyone compares us," she said. "People will ask, 'Why isn't Tori doing as well as Lexi?' You need to realize she's a freshman and was sixth at indoor nationals and second at SEC.

"Besides me, she's the best freshman in the country."

Sanders said their careers had always been "the Lexi-and-Tori show."

"They were competitive, but as long as the only one who beat them was their sister, they were OK with that," he said. "Now they're at the next level, it's not always going to be that situation. There are so many great athletes, it's just not going to happen like it always used to."

The original qualifying standard for the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials was 14-5 1-4. Tori hit that early in the indoor season and matched her personal record twice more outdoors. Lexi went 14-9 in her first collegiate meet.

So for a while, they expected to compete together at the Trials.

"But so many females met that (14-5 1-4) qualifying standard, they upped it to 14-9," Sanders said. "Lexi had already jumped that, and Tori just didn't get it."

After the NCAA meet, Lexi stayed in Fayetteville to train with Sandi Morris, the American record holder and former Razorback; Tori returned to Cabot.

So the Trials marked Lexi's first meet without her sister.

"It was different," Lexi said. "It helped a lot having Sandi there to fill that role. It was nice because I'm so used to having somebody there."

She surprised many when she qualified for the final spot on the American team with a PR 15-5. Jen Suhr, the defending Olympic champion, went 15-9; Morris cleared 15-7.

"Going into the trials, I expected her to do well but not to place," Tori said. "But she's just one of those people who always surprises me."

Brent Weeks said his daughters — CHS co-salutatorians with 4.26 GPAs and UA 4.0 chemistry majors — were both "incredibly disciplined."

"My oldest son made a comment one time that they are the most interesting people we know," he said. "They map out every minute of their day. They just have everything down to the minute organized. Go to their apartment in Fayetteville — everything is perfect."

Not many people expected Lexi to qualify for the Olympics this time, and not many expect her to finish among the top three in Rio.

"I don't think she's planning to medal," Brent Weeks said. "We're not expecting her to. But there's a football saying, 'Any given Sunday.' Oh, Lord, if she medals — that'll be too much. We may not come home."