Birmingham Olympian finds victory in life with Christ

As 9-year-old Vonetta Jeffery ran track and field events in Birmingham, the Southern sun glinted off visions of an Olympic gold medal.
   
Little did she know her quest for victory would be accomplished not on a warm summer day but with the chill of winter whistling past her on a track of frozen ice.
   
In 2002, Vonetta Jeffery Flowers became the first black person to win an Olympic gold medal during the Winter Olympic Games for bobsledding. This year, Flowers was set to defend that title Feb. 20–21 with partner Jean Prahm as part of the U.S. Olympic bobsledding team during the 2006 Winter Olympics at Torino (also known as Turin), Italy.
   
Flowers began working toward her Olympic dream while growing up in Birmingham, excelling in track and field events at P.D. Jackson-Olin High School. She went on to the University of Alabama at Birmingham and graduated as the school’s first seven-time All-American. Flowers also had 35 conference titles.
   
It was during this time that she met her husband, Johnny Flowers, and God. “While college, my track career and my love life were good, I felt something was missing in my life,” Flowers wrote in her recently released book “Running on Ice.” 
   
“I had no spiritual connection, and faith in God wasn’t part of my life,” she wrote.
   
Her then-boyfriend, Johnny Flowers, had recently returned to regular church attendance. He encouraged Flowers to attend but she was hesitant. “I felt better after going to church, singing songs and praying to God, but I wasn’t ready to make a commitment (to join),” she said.
   
Then a friend of Flowers invited her to attend Faith Chapel Christian Center, a nondenominational church in Birmingham. She immediately knew this church was different from any she had ever attended and began attending membership classes.
   
During one of the classes, someone asked Flowers if she had a personal relationship with Jesus.
   
“Because I didn’t have one, I responded, ‘No,’” Flowers said. “They asked if I would like to know Jesus and I said, ‘Yes.’” She accepted Jesus Christ then and there.
   
“Before I became a Christian, I didn’t feel like a bad person but I was lost without Christ,” Flowers said. “That day … I made a life-changing decision.”
   
For her, that decision was more than a commitment to going to church or reading her Bible. “It meant that day in and day out I was going to follow the heart of God and the footsteps of Jesus,” she said.
   
That faith became dearer as Flowers failed to make the cut for the U.S. Summer Olympic team, both in 1996 and 2000.
   
Discouraged, she began to consider giving up her Olympic dreams to start a family with Johnny, whom she married in 1999. 
   
But he encouraged her to try out for the U.S. bobsled team, which was seeking members at the 2000 summer trials.
   
Flowers reluctantly tried out and made the team as a brakeman partnered with driver Bonny Warner. As brakeman, Flowers is responsible for the running push that helps give the bobsled its speed.
   
“In the same month when my Olympic aspirations had been crushed, I found myself moving hopefully down an entirely new path towards my dream, all because of a husband who wouldn’t give up and a God who gives us all second chances,” she said.
   
Although Flowers had won a spot on the team as Warner’s partner, only months before the 2002 Olympic trials, Warner decided to replace Flowers with another brakeman. Flowers returned to Birmingham crushed at again seeing her Olympic dreams slip away. 
   
But her husband again came through for Flowers, encouraging her to continue her training. Two months later, Flowers received an invitation to try out as brakeman for Jill Bakken. She earned the spot and Feb. 19, 2002, achieved her gold-medal dream.
   
Flowers and Bakken completed their two runs down the nearly mile-long track for a combined winning time of 1 minute, 37.76 seconds.
   
“I thought my way to the Olympics would be in track and field through running or jumping in my track shoes,” Flowers said. “Little did I know that in God’s timing, He planned for me to don bobsled track shoes with hundreds of spikes, and I would take up the sport of bobsled.
“It shows the humor and mystery of an eternal God that He can take me from Birmingham, Alabama, and teach me how to run on ice.”
   
For information on Flowers’ book, published by New Hope Publishers, the general trade-publishing imprint for Woman’s Missionary Union, visit www.newhopepublishers.com or www.vonettaflowers.com. (Compiled by TAB)