LOYALTY
WINS GOLD

Topics: Assurance; Faith; Guidance; Loyalty; Providence; Trials

References: Proverbs 3:5–6; Jeremiah 29:11; Philippians 4:6–7

Vonetta Flowers was the first person of African descent to win a gold medal for the United States in the Olympic Winter Games. She did that in 2002 after she and teammate Jill Bakken jumped into a speeding bobsled and hurled themselves downhill in record time.

In the whirlwind of press coverage that followed, Flowers was named one of People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People.” She appeared on the Today show with Katie Couric and Matt Lauer. In the intense media spotlight, Flowers said time and time again, “I thank God for this win, because without him I wouldn’t be here.”

When she was age nine, Flowers was singled out as an athlete with Olympic potential. Her first track coach, Dewitt Thomas, told her she could be the next Jackie Joyner-Kersee. “I believed him,” Flowers says.

Flowers went to the University of Alabama, Birmingham, on a full-ride athletic scholarship. She became one of the school’s most decorated student athletes and the first person from her family to graduate from college. She tried out for the U.S. Olympic track and field team in 1996 as a college senior, but ankle injuries contributed to a disappointing thirteenth-place finish. Flowers began questioning her future. “I had achieved a lot of success in track and field based on my individual efforts, and I believed if I trained hard enough and stayed healthy, that would be enough for me to make the Olympic team. I didn’t yet realize I needed God in my life to understand that what he wanted for my life was far greater than anything I ever could have imagined.”

Flowers started attending church with a friend. Soon she made the decision to accept Christ as her Savior. In 1999, Flowers married Johnny, a fellow athlete and pastor’s kid. With Johnny coaching her, Flowers started training again for the 2000 Olympics. Another ankle injury kept her off the team.

Then Johnny saw a flyer inviting athletes to try out for the U.S. bobsled team. Two weeks later, Bonny Warner, a world-class bobsled driver, invited Flowers to come to Germany to learn how to push a bobsled. After several weeks of training, Flowers asked to be brakeman on Warner’s two-person sled. By the end of 2001, the duo was ranked third in the world. It looked like an easy slide to the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Then Warner dumped Flowers for another brakeman.

“I was devastated,” Flowers says. For almost two weeks she didn’t do anything. But then Johnny stepped in. “God put you in this sport for a reason, so we’re going to start training again,” he said to his wife.

A dubious Flowers agreed to start training again. Within a week of returning to the track, she received a phone call from Jill Bakken, the number-two driver in the world, asking Flowers to join her team. Together Flowers and Bakken made it to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. But the night before what would be their history-making competition, Flowers got another phone call. Jean Racine, the number-one driver in the world, asked Flowers to leave Jill and join her sled. Was she tempted?

Not a bit. Flowers stayed with Bakken, and they took the gold.

—Lisa Ann Cockrel, “Golden Girl,” Today’s Christian Woman (November–December 2005)