• September 13, 1999
• Vol. 52
• No. 10

Pole Star

Shannon Hartnett Makes Her Mark—and Breaks Records—with Highland Flings

Shannon Hartnett is used to the stares. Kind of goes with the territory when you've got a bod that looks like a cross between Barbie and Mark McGwire. But what really makes jaws drop is the sight of the 34-year-old Californian beating the kilts off her male competition at the Highland Games—an amalgam of traditional Scottish sporting events held annually in both Scotland and North America. Her specialty: tossing the caber, a giant log resembling a telephone pole and sometimes weighing close to her 148 pounds. "I've heard it all," says Hartnett of the whispered jokes. "But I don't pay much attention, I'm usually in my own little world."

That would be world, as in champion. During the decade the Mill Valley, Calif., resident has been competing, she has racked up four women's world titles and nine in the U.S. "She's an exceptional athlete," says top competitor Matt Sanford. Hartnett has been displaying that prowess since her childhood in San Rafael, Calif., where she played on the boys' junior high football team. "Shannon simply loved to compete," says dad Jack Hartnett, 63, a now-retired high school teacher, of the younger of his two kids. "No one could talk her out of anything."

That's still the case, as Hartnett—who has been discreetly dating a fellow competitor for two years—continues to pursue a sport she loves despite the limited financial rewards. (While the top men can earn $40,000 a year, Hartnett runs a gym to help pay the bills.) There are, however, payoffs of another sort. "In the past few years they've been adding women's divisions," she observes. "I was humiliating some of the guys by beating them."