First black to win a medal sees herself in new role

SALT LAKE CITY -- Vonetta Flowers woke up famous Wednesday. She never really went to sleep the night before.

Flowers and Jill Bakken won gold in the first-ever women's Olympic bobsled races Tuesday night, and made history in too many ways to count.

They shocked the experts. They won America's first bobsledding medal in 46 years. They proved these Winter Games, pitched as a tribute to the purity of sport, truly do have a democratic tilt to them.

Anyone can win a medal -- track stars or snowbirds, Alaskans or Alabamians, and now, most notably, Anglos or African-Americans.

Flowers, a long-jumper whose Summer Olympics dreams were dashed two years ago, became the first black athlete to win a medal in the Winter Games.

She and Bakken rode the bobsled faster than the vaunted Germans, and faster than the megahyped, mega-exposed USA-1 team led by Jean Racine.

"We're no longer the "other" team," Flowers said. "We're THE team now."

The victory was about more than just the medal for Flowers. She sees herself as something of a role model for young black athletes who never dreamed of winning gold on ice.

Of course, she never thought it was possible until a few years ago.

She grew up in Helena (that's Hel-EEN-a), a small suburb of Birmingham in the rolling hills of central Alabama. Football is king there, not bobsledding. That's why Flowers' surprising ascent to the U.S. bobsled team in 2000 was met with almost universal indifference where she lives.

"I tried to talk her out of it. Bobsled? It just looked sad and depressing to me," said her mother, Bobbie Jeffery.

"Pretty much, they (Alabamians) saw the movie Cool Runnings. But other than that, they didn't understand the connection," said Flowers' husband, Johnny. "Why would someone in Alabama want to bobsled?"

Quite simply, Flowers wanted to win an Olympic gold medal.

She was a seven-time All-American track star at Alabama-Birmingham, and she qualified for the Summer Olympic trials in 2000.

She didn't make it to the Sydney Games, and her dreams of Olympic gold appeared over. But while walking out of the athletes' village during trials, Johnny Flowers saw a flier on the wall advertising nearby tryouts for bobsledders.

"The flier was a joke, strictly a joke," Johnny Flowers recalled.

They went anyway, just for kicks. Flowers did well, and within weeks found herself being whisked off to Germany to learn how to push one of those 500-pound sleds.

She eventually got a call from Bakken, who wanted to improve her team, and Flowers won the pusher job over Bakken's good friend Shauna Rohbock.

The rest is history.

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