Vonetta Flowers poses with her son Jordan (L), after Jordan and his twin were flown to Italy to surprise her during the Olympic Winter Games Turin 2006 on Feb. 19, 2006 in Sestriere, Italy.
When Vonetta Flowers — a star sprinter and long jumper at the University of Alabama at Birmingham — told her family she was thinking of making the switch from track and field to bobsled, they laughed.
But it wasn’t a joke.
Flowers had a successful post-collegiate career in track, which at one time had her ranked third in the U.S. But after she failed to qualify for back-to-back Olympics in 1996 and 2000, thanks to multiple injuries and five surgeries, she opted to hang up her spikes to focus on starting a family.
Then opportunity knocked, and she said she almost didn’t answer.
“I was an assistant track and field coach at my alma mater (UAB) in 2000. After my failed attempts to make the summer Games, I had put on my coach’s hat to try to help one of my athletes live out their dream,” the now 48-year-old said.
While at a track event, Flowers noticed a sign encouraging athletes to continue their dream by trying out for bobsled. Her husband, Johnny Flowers, a former football/track and field athlete, thought it would be fun for them to try out together.
“I was still mentally trying to grasp the fact that my Olympic dreams were over,” Flowers said. But after her husband — who was her trainer for both Olympic trials — pulled his hamstring during the tryout, he told his wife, “Now you have to live out the family dream of going to the Olympics!”
That, she said, was “how my bobsled career began.”
Two years after that tryout, she would become the first African-American athlete to ever medal at a Winter Olympics — winning gold at the Olympic Winter Games Salt Lake City 2002 in the two-woman bobsled. Twenty years ago also marked the first time the event was included in the Olympic program.
“After our sled crossed the line, [Jill Bakken] and I were going crazy because the number 1 was showing by our time. At that point, we knew that we had just pulled off one of the biggest upsets in history.”
Not long after crossing the line, NBC sportscaster and former pro tennis player Mary Carillo shared that no other African American had ever won gold in the Winter Olympics. “I honestly had no idea! All I wanted to do was live out a childhood dream of winning a medal for Team USA,” shared Flowers.
Not long after crossing the line, NBC sportscaster and former pro tennis player Mary Carillo shared that no other African American had ever won gold in the Winter Olympics. “I honestly had no idea! All I wanted to do was live out a childhood dream of winning a medal for Team USA,” shared Flowers.
Four years later, at the Olympic Winter Games Torino 2006, she would finish in sixth, a year after giving birth to twin boys.
“My sons had their passports when they were five months old and began traveling internationally shortly after that,” Flowers said. “They became a part of the team, and their ‘aunts’ — my bobsled sisters — helped me raise them.”
Shortly after the 2006 Games, the gold medalist announced her retirement.
