0202210411
DETROIT FREE PRESS
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Thursday, February 21, 2002
METRO FINAL
1
Photo MENAHEM KAHANA/Agence France-Presse
American Vonetta Flowers, left, cries with partner Jill Bakken at
Wednesday night's medals ceremony in downtown Salt Lake City. They won the
first Olympic gold in women's bobsled the night before.
MITCH ALBOM FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
SALT LAKE 2002 WINTER OLYMPICS. DAY 13.
Copyright (c) 2002, Detroit Free Press
FLOWERS' STORY: WONDERFUL, WEIRD
SALT LAKE CITY -- It is raining down in Birmingham, Ala., and the air is a
balmy 69 degrees. Yolanda Cooper, a senior sprinter at the University of
Alabama-Birmingham, excitedly picks up the phone. She spent the previous night
with her teammates watching her track coach, Vonetta Flowers, become the first
black gold medalist in the history of the Winter Olympics. Vonetta, the woman
who clocks her lap times? Vonetta, who runs alongside her? That Vonetta? Won
the Olympic bobsled?
"I'm definitely gonna try to make the Olympics like that!" Yolanda says. "I
think I could be really fast on that thing!"
Have you ever seen a bobsled, she is asked?
"No," she admits.
When Flowers, 28, jumped into that sled Tuesday night she took one last look
at the world, then ducked her head. When she popped up, 44 seconds later, the
world was a different place.
Since then, she has been mobbed, celebrated, photographed and interviewed by
every TV program under the sun. She is twice as sought-after as her driver,
Jill Bakken, who chose her to be on the team. The media, most of whom have
never seen a bobsled race in person, hailed Flowers as a speed-suited Jackie
Robinson, kicking the door in for future black Winter Olympians.
Well, let's hope so. But take a moment to examine the route Flowers traveled
to the gold medal. It's a strange path that few will ever make. And after you
hear it, you might not even want to.
"I'd never seen a bobsled before the year 2000," Flowers admitted Wednesday.
"I didn't like the cold. It's not that I didn't like it, I just didn't like
being in it."
Flowers laughed. Born and raised in Alabama, she had been a track athlete for
years, with a dream of making the Olympics as a long jumper. At the 2000 track
and field trials for Sydney, she finished 12th and was nursing her
disappointment when her husband noticed a flyer on a wall.
"It was asking for versatile women track athletes who were interested in
bobsled," Flowers said.
Her husband, Johnny, called the note "a complete joke." They laughed at the
thought of telling their Alabama friends about a sled tryout. On a lark, they
decided to go.
But to their surprise, Vonetta's speed and strength showed enormous promise in
the mini-skills test. The woman who posted the flyer, Bonny Warner, the former
U.S. luge Olympian turned bobsledder, told Vonetta she might be good enough to
win a medal in the 2002 Salt Lake Games.
That was less than two years away.
Vonetta stopped laughing.
The road to gold
Now, we need to stop the story for a moment to point out -- especially to
young people -- that this is not how you normally make the Olympics. Most
Olympians have been at their sport since childhood. It typically requires
years and years of practice, especially to have any shot at a medal.
But the brakeman/pusher position in bobsled is a rare exception. It requires
no more than a few seconds of an athlete's effort -- albeit a supreme effort
-- and then the rest, in essence, is riding in the back.
This is the reason that everyone from Edwin Moses, a hurdler, to Herschel
Walker, a football player, has given the position a try. If you have
exceptional speed -- as they and Vonetta do -- you can leapfrog the normal
years of sweat and tears and find yourself on an Olympic team.
OK, back to the tale. Vonetta saw her first sled when she accompanied Warner
to Germany. She was amazed at how heavy it was. She practiced a few weeks at
the art of pushing. One month later, she and Warner finished second in the
U.S. national team trials.
One month?
Again. Stop. This doesn't happen. Once in a blue moon, maybe -- and mostly
because bobsled was only starting for women in the 2002 Olympics. There were
far fewer women doing bobsled than say, skiing, skating or even cross-country.
This won't be the case next time around. Another exception to the rules.
OK. Back to the story.
Always trading places
Remember how, Tuesday night, the angle the media regurgitated was how American
Jean Racine, considered our best bobsled hope, had ditched her best friend and
brakeman, Jen Davidson, when she thought Davidson was slipping? Racine, from
Waterford, replaced her friend with Gea Johnson, another track star convert,
and incurred the wrath of critics everywhere. How could you dump your partner?
How could you turn on your friend? It's a good thing you finished fifth and
the "good guys" -- Vonetta and Jill -- won.
Well, once again, what NBC won't bother to tell you -- after all, why ruin a
terrific story? -- is that Vonetta and Jill had themselves each gone through a
split with a partner.
Last fall, Warner began to waver on Flowers. She said she wanted her to fight
for her job with another brakeman. Flowers said no. Take me or leave me.
"She left me," Vonetta said.
What did you do?
"I went back to Alabama, to my job as assistant track coach at UAB. At that
point, that was it for me and bobsled. It wasn't my life. It didn't mean that
much. I wanted to start a family."
This is four months ago.
Meanwhile, Jill, who had been racing with another partner and dear friend,
Shauna Rohbock -- stay with me here, this gets tricky -- decided to do to her
what Racine had done to Davidson.
"I called Shauna and told her I wanted her to do a 'push-off' with Vonetta,"
Jill said. "It was a really hard decision, but it was something I felt I had
to do."
Vonetta, remember, had already stopped thinking about bobsled. But she started
thinking again. She came north. She won the push-off, a best two-of-three
contest.
She had a new partner.
And they made the Olympic team.
Her final decision
Still with me? Almost done. We've now established that the "evil" team of
Racine and Johnson was pretty much doing what everyone in bobsled does,
including Jill Bakken. (Although Bakken insists that she and her former
partner are still good friends, and it was handled more delicately.)
Now, to the final twist. On Sunday in the Olympic Village, two days before
their race, Vonetta got a phone call.
It was Jean Racine, admitting that her new partner, Johnson, was plagued by a
balky hamstring.
"She asked me if I would leave Jill and compete with her," Vonetta says.
This was two days before the race!
"I told her no. I was loyal to Jill. I thought we had a chance to win a gold
medal."
And they did.
And they made history.
Now, understand. It's wonderful that Flowers and Bakken won, and Flowers is a
gifted and humble athlete who is sincere when she says, "Maybe this will
encourage other African-American kids to try to get into the Winter Olympics."
But let's make sure if they do, it's the right way. That they get into
development, put in the time and practice. The worst thing that could happen
from Flowers' inspiring moment is a rage of kids trying to make the Olympics
four months before the games begin. Or figuring that the first time they try
it they get a gold medal.
The fact is, this was a truly weird confluence of events -- cut-throat partner
switching, a new sport, maybe the one position in the Olympics that doesn't
require years and years of work.
And, by the way, a really good driver.
"Vonetta could be gone next year," Bakken said Wednesday, stunning a roomful
of reporters, "and I'll have to find someone else. That's just how the sport
works."
Someone asked Vonetta her reaction. She shrugged.
"I want to start a family," she said.
Nearly 2,000 miles away, in balmy Birmingham, Yolanda, the college sprinter,
is talking now about making the Olympics in bobsled, the way her coach did.
"The cold would be something I'd have to adapt to," she says. "But I don't
know, it's something to think about."
Think hard. This story was a million wonderful things, but it was miles from
normal.
Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or albom@freepress.com. Catch "Albom in
the Afternoon" 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WJR-AM (760).
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