Born and raised in Birmingham, AL, Vonetta Flowers had rarely seen snow and ice, let alone ever imagined her path to greatness would literally be covered by both. First discovered as a remarkably fast fourth grader, Flowers was recruited into a local track team where she honed a God-given gift to run and jump. Eventually, her talent and tenacious work ethic led to a track scholarship to the University of Alabama Birmingham. She was the first member of her family to pursue higher education. At UAB she became a 7-time All American and dreamed of representing the USA at the Olympic Games. Unfortunately, injuries plagued Flowers’s Olympic pursuits and after failed attempts to make the 1996 & 2000 Olympic teams it appeared her dream had been put to rest.

Flowers married her college sweetheart Johnny, a champion athlete himself, and it was he who eventually led her down a frosty path back to her dream. Two days after the 2000 Olympic Trials Johnny came upon a USA Bobsled Team recruiting flyer, seeking talented track and field athletes to try sliding. Intrigued, Johnny responded, and dragged Flowers along with him. Bobsled coaches couldn’t miss Flowers’s athletic ability and in short order she found herself in some of Europe’s classic cold weather locales, pushing a 450 lb. sled with all she had toward an unlikely, rekindled Olympic dream.

By the end of her rookie season, Flowers and her then teammate, Bonny Warner, were ranked 2nd in the US and 3rd in the world. Then, unexpectedly, and with the Olympics in sight, Warner elected to go with a different pusher and Flowers’s Olympic dream was once again in doubt. She connected with driver Jill Bakken and the two immediately clicked. With only one race under their belts as team prior to the 2002 Olympics they arrived in Salt Lake City under the radar…longshots at best. They rose to the occasion on the world’s biggest sporting stage and shocked the bobsled world, winning the first US Olympic bobsled medal in 46 years. With the victory Flowers left indelible footprints on the podium and in the snow as the first black athlete to ever claim winter Olympic gold.

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