Things never have been easy for Sheila Taormina.

Her sister's death, deep depression, multiple injuries, excruciating financial stress -- the piling on of bad breaks has become almost routine for the 39-year-old Michigan athlete.

But this was different.

Waiting at her suburban Detroit home was a FedEx package, with a rose and another chilling note from a Michigan man who stalked her for 11 months, nearly destroying her Olympic career and forcing her to hole up in a cheap Colorado Springs motel in August 2002, fearing rape or murder.

"It was a very graphic description of what he was going to do to me, very violent things," she said.

"I'll talk about it all someday, I don't care, I'll open up with the ugliest of uglies. There are things I haven't shared with anybody yet," she added.

Historic achievement

Taormina sat in the Olympic village the other day, chatting amiably about her historic moment today, when the 5-foot-3 American will become the first woman to compete in three Olympic sports: swimming, triathlon and now modern pentathlon, an obscure event that combines shooting, fencing, swimming, horseback riding and running.

Until 2005, Taormina never had ridden a horse, never had fired a gun, never had picked up a sword. She spent $50,000 a year in lessons to learn the new sports, trained six days a week and sold her house to avoid bankruptcy -- all because of an obsessive urge to do something better, something distinct, at the Beijing Games.

"I was feeling such anxiety and stress that I would just go home and I would cry. I'd think, 'I just can't take this.' . . . If you are an experienced athlete who trains four hours a day, six days a week and focuses every minute on your technique, does it still take you 10 years like coaches say it does?" she said. "I didn't know if I could do it. Even on Friday, I'm not sure I'm going to show that I accomplished that."

Taormina is a consummate competitor, consumed by a search for Olympic success that started when she was a teenager 20 years ago. After failing to make the 1988 and 1992 U.S. swim teams, the four-time All-America swimmer at the University of Georgia plunged deeply, shooting for the 1996 Atlanta Games instead of putting her MBA degree to work.

Her crowning moment came when she swam the third leg on America's gold medal-winning 800-meter freestyle relay.

But Taormina wasn't satisfied.

"I was the slowest split," she said.

After Atlanta, Taormina started over in triathlon, finishing sixth at the 2000 Sydney Games, an encouraging performance as she looked ahead to Athens.

Lessons learned

To help pay for training, Taormina taught swim lessons part time. In June 2002, she received a phone call from James E. Conyers, of Flint, Mich., who wanted to take a few lessons.

"The next day, he left a message saying I would win a gold medal in 2004 and in 2005 I would retire and have his baby," Taormina recalled at the U.S. Olympic Committee Media Summit in Chicago earlier this year. "I've never had a phone call like that. I didn't know if it was a joke. It just grew from there -- FedEx packages of roses, plans for our marriage, moving to France."

Taormina told Conyers to leave her alone; he responded with increasingly angry e-mails, phone messages and letters. Advised to leave Livonia, where she lived alone, Taormina moved to Colorado Springs in early August 2002 to train at the Olympic Training Center, where security officials could protect her.

One night, while dreaming Conyers was standing outside her motel door with a gun, Taormina jumped out of bed and called the front desk, according to the Detroit Free Press.

"He's here! He's here! He's got a gun," she screamed.

When Taormina came out of her nightmare, she broke down sobbing.

After another alarming letter, a warrant was issued in early December 2002 for Conyers' arrest on two charges of aggravated stalking. But as Christmas neared, Conyers still wasn't in custody. Taking matters into his own hands, Taormina's coach, Lew Kidder, drove to Con- yers' home, called police and waited.

"You come and get him right now or you're going to have a girl who's going off the deep end," he said.

Conyers was arrested later that day. In March 2003, a judge ordered Conyers to serve five years' probation and to wear an electronic tether for a year.

By that time, Taormina had sold her house and moved to Clermont, Fla., site of USA Triathlon's national training center. She could relax now.

Then a friend spotted Conyers in the neighborhood.

"That can't be," she said.

"Well, doesn't he have that tattoo on his arm that says, 'US Pro,' but the 'US' is crossed out and 'France' is written beneath it," he said.

"You saw that?" Taormina asked.

Arrested again

In April, a warrant was issued for Conyers' arrest on a charge of violating probation for aggravated stalking. He was sentenced to a term of three years, but he ended up serving five because of bad behavior. Recently released, Conyers hasn't contacted Taormina.

"It affected me. I lost a lot of my joy, a lot of my naivete," she said. "It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing to say I considered going on anti-anxiety medication and antidepressants. But the more you talk about it with people, the more you realize how many people deal with anxieties. It's so common.

"Just being a human being is not easy. So I've learned not to be embarrassed. And at least I can share my story with others, so they know they're not alone."

One more try

Moments after crossing the finish line in 23rd place at the Athens Games, Taormina retired from sports. But . . .

Determined to compete in the Winter Olympics in cross country skiing, Taormina moved to Michigan's Upper Peninsula in 2005, living alone and training on isolated trails.

"I was always skiing by myself and always felt a little scared," she said. "Once, I thought for sure I saw bear tracks and I thought, 'Oh, God, I might get eaten alive out here, and no one's going to know where I am.' "

Next was modern pentathlon, the five-in-one sport. Her family urged her to reconsider, but Taormina pushed on, enduring long training days, then surfing the Web at night for information about clinical depression.

"I've been on the edge to the point that this was not a mentally healthy endeavor," she said. "My family for the first year asked me to not do this.

"The financial stress because I had to sell my house to do it. The mental stress. I was losing, falling off the horse. It's tough to take. After you win a gold medal in one sport and you win a world championship in another sport, you find yourself getting humiliated time and time again. You're broke financially. Nobody really believes you can do it."

But against all odds, Taormina is only hours from competing in her fourth Olympics and her third sport.

"It's been a crazy road," she said.