Flowers, Vonetta (1973-…), is a former American Olympic bobsledder. In 2002, she became the first African American to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympic Games .
Vonetta Jeffrey was born on Oct. 29, 1973, in Birmingham, Alabama. She began running as a child. In high school, she was an all-star track and basketball athlete. Flowers was a seven-time National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) All-American in track at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She competed in several events, including the long jump, triple jump, 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, and relays. She married John Flowers, an American track coach and former track athlete, in 1999.
Vonetta Flowers won a gold medal in the long jump at the 1994 Olympic Festival. The festival was a U.S. national competition held between Olympic years. Flowers competed in the long jump at the 2000 Olympic trials but failed to qualify. While at the trials, Flowers’s husband saw a flyer for tryouts as a brakeman for bobsledding . In two-person bobsledding, the team includes a driver and a brakeman. The brakeman helps to push off at the beginning of the run and brakes the sled to a stop at the end of the run. As a trained track athlete, Flowers outperformed many competitors at the bobsled trials.
At the bobsled trials, Flowers met the American bobsledder Bonny Warner. In 2001, Flowers and Warner finished in the top 10 in all seven World Cup races. However, Warner replaced Flowers with another brakeman. Flowers almost quit the sport before the American bobsledder Jill Bakken recruited her as brakeman. In 2002, at the Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, Flowers and Bakken competed against Warner’s team, which was favored to win. Flowers and Bakken broke the course record on their first run and won the first-ever gold medal in women’s bobsled. Flowers retired from competition after the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy. She began working as a track coach at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
