olympic champion – The Blog of Awesome Women

Bonnie Blair: Speed Racer

Bonnie Blair has skated her way into the hearts of America. She comes from an entire family of skaters; Bonnie is the “baby” of the family, born in 1964. She was skating with ease by the age of two and was a competitor by four! When Bonnie was seven, her family moved from her birthplace of Cornwall, New York, to the Midwestern town of Champaign, Illinois. She won the state speed skating championship for her age group that same year.

In Illinois, Bonnie was fortunate to hook up with a great coach, Cathy Priestner, an Olympic champion herself. Cathy directed her toward Olympic-style speed skating and away from the pack racing that had been her strength. Age sixteen was certainly sweet for Bonnie when she skated 500 meters in 46.7 seconds at her debut as a potential Olympian. This gave her a taste of what it could be like to be the fastest woman on skates. However, Bonnie had some bumpy ice ahead—she didn’t make the cut in the actual trials later. Another stumbling block that nearly felled her was money problems; the grueling expense of travel expenses and coaching was more than the Blairs could handle. But Bonnie’s hometown rose to the occasion, and the local police force ran a ten-year campaign to raise funds to pay for their Olympic hopeful through sales of bumper stickers and t-shirts. Their generous spirit paid for Bonnie’s training with the U.S. men’s speed skaters in the Big Sky country of Butte, Montana.

Bonnie first came into global view in the Sarajevo games in 1984. She finished quite honorably, ranking eighth in the 500-meter speed skating race, but Bonnie knew she could do better. For the next Olympics, she focused even harder and increased the difficulty of her regimen— weight-training, running, biking, and roller-skating, all over and above the intense skating. Pushing herself was key for Bonnie. She started breaking world records in 1986 and took the U.S. championship every year from 1985 to 1990. In a power sport, Bonnie actually measured in as much smaller and lighter than many of her rivals from around the world.

After adopting her new style of training, 1988 was the first Olympics Bonnie participated in. She took a gold medal in the 500-meter race and set a world record of 39.10 seconds, beating out a German skater in the first place who had just set a world record. Bonnie didn’t stop with that and took home the bronze for the 1,000-meter sprint. Bonnie became the best speed skater in the world in Calgary that day and kept her title at the 1992 games in Albertville, France, with two more gold medals. Bonnie also started winning hearts with her friendly, open manner and lack of pretension.

Odds were somewhat against veteran Bonnie in Lillehammer in 1994, but she did what no other woman has done and took two more gold medals. The emotional highlight of the games that year was not the other drama queen figure skaters—Harding and Kerrigan—but Bonnie Blair. Half the world cried with her as she took her gold and cried while the national anthem played during what was to be Bonnie’s last Olympics. Bonnie Blair: the first woman to earn gold medals in three straight Olympic games and the first American woman to win five gold medals in the history of the Olympics.

“…I’m in this because I love what I’m doing.” —Bonnie Blair

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

BONNIE BLAIR: SPEED RACER

Bonnie Blair - IMDb — https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2089667/

“…I’m in this because I love what I’m doing.” —Bonnie Blair

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

WILMA RUDOLPH: LA GAZELLE

Runner Wilma Rudolph’s life is the story of a great spirit and heart overcoming obstacles that would have stopped anyone else in their tracks, literally! Born in Bethlehem, Tennessee, in 1955, Wilma contracted polio at the age of four and was left with a useless leg.

Wilma’s family was in dire straits with a total of eighteen children from her father’s two marriages. Both parents worked constantly to feed the burgeoning brood, her father as a porter and her mother as a house cleaner, and it was more important to feed Wilma and her siblings than it was to get the medical attention Wilma needed to recover the use of her leg. Two years later circumstances eased a bit, and at the age of six, Wilma started riding the back of the bus with her mother to Nashville twice a week for physical therapy. Although doctors predicted she would never walk without braces, Wilma kept up her rehabilitation program for five years and not only did the braces come off, but “by the time I was twelve,” she told the Chicago Tribune, “I was challenging every boy in the neighborhood at running, jumping, everything.”

Her exceptional ability didn’t go unnoticed. A coach with Tennessee State University saw how she was winning every race she entered in high school and offered to train her for the Olympics, which Wilma hadn’t even heard of. Nevertheless, she qualified for the Olympics at sixteen and took home a bronze medal in the 1956 Summer Games for the 100-meter relay. Still in high school, she decided to work toward a gold medal for the 1960 games.

Well, she did that and more. The three gold medals she won in the 1960 Olympics in Rome—in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash, and the 4 X 100 relay— turned her into a superstar overnight. Wilma was the first American woman ever to win triple gold in a single Olympics. People were stumbling over the top of each other to find the superlatives to describe her. The French named Wilma “La Gazelle,” and in America she was known as “The Fastest Woman on Earth.” Wilma was everybody’s darling after that, with invitations to the JFK White House and numerous guest appearances on television. The flip side of all the glory was, however, that Wilma received hardly any financial reward for her public appearances and had to work odd jobs to get through college.

One year later, Wilma again set the world on fire by breaking the record for the 100-meter dash: 11.2 seconds. Unpredictably, Wilma sat out the ’64 Olympic Games and stayed in school, graduating with a degree in education and returning to the very school she had attended as a youngster to teach second grade. In 1967, she worked for the Job Corps and Operation Champion, a program that endeavored to bring star athletes into American ghettos as positive role models for young kids. Wilma herself loved to talk to kids about sports and was a powerful symbol with her inspiring story.

That Wilma touched the lives of children is best evidenced in a letter writing campaign taken up by a class of fourth graders in Jessup, Maryland, who requested the World Book Encyclopedia correct their error in excluding the world-class athlete. The publisher complied immediately! Wilma has also been honored with induction into both the Olympic Hall of Fame and the National Track and Field Hall of Fame. A film version of her autobiography Wilma starring Cicely Tyson was produced to tremendous acclaim. Her death from terminal brain cancer took place shortly after she received an honor as one of “The Great Ones” at the premiere National Sports Awards in 1993.

“I have spent a lifetime trying to share what it has meant to be a woman first in the world of sports so that other young women will have a chance to reach their dreams.”

— Wilma Rudolph

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

ALICE COACHMAN: RUNNING FOR HER LIFE

Alice Coachman.jpg — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Coachman

Boy, could Alice Coachman run and jump! Because of World War II, however, national competitions were as far as an athlete could aspire in the forties, and the young African American athlete held the national titles for the high jump for twelve consecutive years. Her chance to achieve international recognition finally came in the 1948 Olympics; Alice was thought to be past her prime, but she decided to go for it anyway. Her teammates lost every race; finally it was Alice’s turn for the high jump. She took the gold, defeating an opponent who towered above her in height, to become at age twenty-four, the first black woman to win Olympic gold and the first American woman to go for the gold in track and field.

Alice was warmly welcomed back to America with an invitation to the White House, a victory motorcade through her home state of Georgia, and a contract to endorse Coca Cola. Not surprisingly, the racist and sexist America of
the forties didn’t fully embrace Alice as it should have. She was, however, lionized in the black community as a favorite daughter and truly was the trailblazer for every black woman athlete to come after her.

This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson, which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media.

Bonnie Blair: Speed Racer

Skater_Bonnie_Blair — By John Mathew Smith from Laurel Maryland, USA – Skater Bonnie Blair, CC BY-SA 2.0, Public Domain.

Bonnie first came into global view in the Sarajevo games in 1984. She finished quite honorably, ranking eighth in the 500-meter speed skating race, but Bonnie knew she could do better. For the next Olympics, she focused even harder and increased the difficulty of her regimen—weight-training, running, biking, and roller-skating, all over and above the intense skating. Pushing herself was key for Bonnie. She started breaking world records in 1986 and took the U.S. championship every year from 1985 to 1990. In a power sport, Bonnie actually measured in as much smaller and lighter than many of her rivals from around the world.