This Olympic Moment

pointing us to a brightly shining future

Hello friends, and Happy Olympics!

I hope you’re having as much fun as I am catching up on all the happenings in Paris. Streaming whatever I want to watch at any moment has been a game-changer in my viewing habits. I am as blown away as everyone else by the strength and skill of Simone Biles, but I’m also really enjoying getting to know new athletes. I’ve been following the rugby player from Vermont that has taken TikTok by storm, Ilona Maher, the crushing final 4km of cyclist Kristen Faulkner hauling her way through the streets of Paris, and of course in track and field, Sha’Carri Richardson with her comeback silver in the women’s 100m, and Noah Lyles with an incredible photo finish to win gold in the men’s 100m. They both have more to come. It’s the best of the games in every way.

While I can’t imagine how tricky it has been to move around the city, watching these events with the iconic landmarks in the background from the Eiffel Tower to Versailles has been really stunning.

Isabelle Daniels, Barbara Jones, Lucinda Williams, and Wilma Rudolph with Coach Edward Temple after the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne. Photo courtesy of the TSU Special Collections

In other news I had the honor of guest editing the HerStry newsletter this week, and I wanted to share my thoughts with you as well! For my writing friends, HerStry, if you haven’t found it already, is a fantastic resource to check out. But now, take a look at what I shared with the “Babes Who Write”:

If your house is anything like mine, the summer season marks a change in the tempo that is in equal part chaos and celebration. My kids are older now, and in the fall when our youngest goes to college, we will officially enter what my husband calls phase one of empty nesting. They’ll be out of the house, but not all the way. I am desperate to hold on to and cherish these crazy moments knowing for certain they won’t last forever.

This summer has the added excitement of being an Olympic year and watching the games has been like a balm to my wearied soul. Nothing makes the heart race and soar like an inspirational sports story, and these weeks are filled with them. But they pass by so quickly. The 100-meter sprint will last around 11 seconds, and the women competing will have worked their entire lives to arrive at that moment. Even a marathon lasts only a few hours.

In January my version of a marathon began when my book about a team of Olympic athletes launched into the world. You may think that the marathon was the writing of the book, but like the runners, I had years of preparation before the big event. The race is to get the story seen, and the clock is ticking.

Inspiration struck when my oldest was in middle school and needed to do a project based on an autobiography. I suggested a book written by Edward Temple, a coach who had trained a team of unknown athletes to become the fastest women in the world. My grandfather was a collegiate track coach himself and friendly with Coach Temple, so I had grown up knowing the story, and I thought my daughter would like it too.

It was a hit. She threw herself into the project, and Ed Temple’s philosophy of coaching reached through the decades to yet another girl, a child he had never met. That was the moment that I knew this story had to be written.

I could have gotten a PhD for the amount of time I spent digging through archives, chasing down interviews, and sifting through endless records. But that was the drive that it took to get it done.

I was, after all, writing about athletes that had that kind of drive and more. The drive to get up at five in the morning and run, then rest, then repeat the run, then rest, then do it all again. Their drive made me believe that I could do what needed to be done as well. And I believed more than anything, that people needed to hear their story and the Tigerbelles deserved the recognition of their achievements.

The Tigerbelles included Wilma Rudolph, the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics in Track and Field. Wilma competed in her first Olympics at age 16, just a few years after her leg had been in a brace due to childhood polio. Barbara Jones was the youngest woman to win Olympic gold at age 15. Isabelle Daniels ran barefoot along her father’s bus route to get in extra miles and when she finally ran in spikes on the cinder track she was so fast that sparks flew up behind her.

Coming from a historically Black college in Nashville, Tennessee, the Tigerbelles had to fight against the racism of the segregated South, and became the first HBCU to win an integrated national championship in 1955, despite having to practice on a track that only went halfway around the football field. But more than the facts and figures of their accomplishments, the Tigerbelles represented the very essence of teamwork and of overcoming adversity.

The Tigerbelles had a motto that they would not graduate until they taught the younger runners all that they knew. They didn’t want their younger teammates to be as good as they were, they wanted them to be better.

It’s been sixty-four years since eight Tigerbelles went to Rome and won worldwide acclaim in the 1960 Olympics. I’m thrilled to be cheering on the athletes competing this year, and I’ve learned something about what it’s taken them to get to this elite level. The grit and determination, the early mornings and late nights, the grueling practices, the running through injury, the exhausting travel and intense competition, the perfect combination of steel nerves and explosive energy that it takes to make a champion.

But with all of the focus trained on who will win the gold this year, we can also take a moment to look back and honor the women who did it first. The women who blazed the trail, who leaned forward and broke the tape across their chests first so that the world could see that it was possible, and so that young women all these decades later can lace up their sneakers, get outside, and run, never questioning their right to do so.

The Tigerbelles wanted to win, of course, every competitor does. But what they wanted most of all was to prove their worth. To show the world what they were capable of, and to give their greatest effort, the ultimate strength they had found within themselves, to the competition. No matter the outcome, they would know they had given it everything they had.

They accomplished their goals, and so can we. And then they passed the torch to the next generation and watched them shine.

Tigerbelles in the News

This week the Tigerbelles book was spotted in Town & Country in a great list they pulled together featuring Olympic stories.

I also got to talk about the Tigerbelles as a part of Nashville’s Olympic history with Kahlil Ekulona on NPR’s This is Nashville

Olympic Listening

For even more behind-the-scenes news and insider reports from Paris check out the Keep the Flame Alive podcast. This is an all-Olympics all the time podcast, and the hosts are really in their element this month!

That’s all for now!

xo Aime