Sledding for Gold

Having grown up in the warm and sunny South, Vonetta Flowers is an unlikely Olympic bobsledding champion, but she’s hoping to earn her second gold medal at the XX Olympic Winter Games Feb. 10-26 in Torino, Italy.

"When I went out there and took my first bobsled ride, I felt like I’d been put in a trash can and thrown down a hill," recalls Flowers, who along with teammate Jill Bakken became the first Olympic gold medalists in the sport of women’s bobsledding in 2002.

In the two-person event, Bakken, the "driver," and Flowers, the "brakeman," push-start a 450-pound, metal and fiberglass sled before hopping aboard to negotiate a twisting, 1,500-meter ice-covered course of 19 turns at speeds reaching 80 mph. It’s a wild ride—extreme, fast and dangerous.

Flowers’ ride to Olympic gold has been pretty wild itself, considering the fact that she grew up—and still lives—in Birmingham, Ala., which averages less than 2 inches of snowfall each year. After her win in 2002, the media leapt onto the Flowers phenomenon, likening her improbable success as the world’s first African-American athlete to win Olympic gold in the winter games with the hit 1993 offbeat movie Cool Runnings, based on the true story of the first Jamaican bobsled team.

"I know!" laughs Flowers, 32. "It’s so funny. Before I came into the sport, all I knew was the movie Cool Runnings. I can truly relate to those guys."

Flowers’ remarkable story is even more compelling than the movie’s. A seven-time indoor/outdoor track and field All-American at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, Flowers thought her childhood dream of being an Olympic athlete was over when she failed in her specialties, the 100 meters and the long jump, at the 2000 summer Olympic trials in Sacramento, Calif. Her husband, Johnny Flowers, 32, who happens to be her coach, manager and trainer, noticed a flier recruiting athletes for the U.S. bobsled team. Both laughed, but decided she would try out.

Four days later, Flowers and her husband arrived at the bobsled tryouts. Finding a skill she didn’t know she had, Flowers wowed the coaches in her preliminary outing and, much to her surprise, made the team. Just two weeks into her new bobsledding career, she teamed with driver Bonnie Warner to break the world start record. Only 18 months later in 2002, she teamed with Bakken and the pair made history, winning gold the first time that women’s bobsledding was an Olympic event.

However, repeating as a gold medalist in the upcoming winter games has an added degree of difficulty for Flowers: She’s become the mom to twin boys since the last Olympics, and as she says, "I won’t do this sport if I can’t take my boys with me." So it’s life on the road for Flowers, her husband and 3-year-old twins, Jaden and Jorden, all of whom traveled this winter to snowy climes such as Calgary, Alberta, and Lake Placid, N.Y., so the star athlete could train for Torino.

"Vonetta is the fastest athlete on the team," says Johnny Flowers of his wife, whose practice regimen in non-snowy Birmingham includes pushing a weighted cart uphill to build her leg muscles for a fast, strong start. "She has been the No. 1 brakeman since she’s been in this sport."

For Flowers, whose life and deep faith are chronicled in her autobiography, Running on Ice: The Overcoming Faith of Vonetta Flowers, the amazing events of the last five years seem like part of a divinely inspired plan.

"You have a dream and you do whatever it takes to get there," she says. "My dream was the summer Olympics, but God had a different plan. He was preparing me for bobsledding through all of my years of track and field."

Visit www.vonettaflowers.com for more information.

Alan Ross is a freelance writer in Bisbee, Ariz.

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