Greeneville and Greene County residents will receive the opportunity to meet a history-making Winter Olympic gold medalist who has an inspiring and faith-building personal story when bobsledder and track star Vonetta Flowers visits Greeneville as a guest of Tusculum College on Oct. 16-18.

Vonetta Flowers is the first black athlete from any nation ever to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympics. She won the medal in women's bobsled, a seemingly unlikely sport for a native of Alabama who knew virtually nothing about bobsledding before finding herself representing the U.S. in that sport in the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Vonetta Flowers will make her initial Greeneville appearance at the First Presbyterian Church fellowship hall area at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 16, to take part in an hour-long community forum, which will include an autograph session. On Friday, Oct. 17, she will attend an invitation-only dinner on the Tusculum College campus and meet and greet special guests who have helped support her visit to Tusculum. At 8 p.m., she will present a speech to Tusculum College students in the auditorium of the Annie Hogan Byrd Fine Arts Building, and also answer questions.

On Saturday, Oct. 18, the gold medalist will breakfast with Tusculum College's athletic teams and present a brief devotional. At noon, she will meet and greet Tusculum alumni present for that weekend's Homecoming festivities.

Vonetta Flowers has become known for her strong Christian faith and her inspirational personal life journey. The fleet young Alabamian had dreamed since childhood of winning an Olympic Gold medal in track, a sport in which she had excelled since elementary school.

In 1992, the then-Vonetta Jeffery graduated from P.D. Jackson Olin High School, where she participated in track and field, volleyball and basketball. She became the first in her family to attend college when she accepted a track and field scholarship to the University of Alabama at Birmingham. By the time she graduated, Vonetta was one of the university's most decorated athletes, with 35 conference titles and victories in the Penn Relays and The Olympic Festival, and its first seven-time All-American.

In both 1996 and 2000, Vonetta qualified for the Olympic Trials, held in Atlanta, Georgia and Sacramento, California, respectively. At the 1996 trials, she competed in the 100 meter dash and the long jump but was unsuccessful in her quest to earn a spot on the team. According to her web site biography, Vonetta spent the next four years focusing all of her energy on training for an opportunity to compete at the 2000 Olympics in the long jump.

She hoped to have an outstanding performance at the 2000 Olympic Trials, but just a few months before the trials began, found herself lying on a hospital bed getting ready for her fifth surgery in eight years. Against all odds, she decided to lace up her spikes one last time, but had a disappointing performance at the 2000 trials and decided it was time to retire from track and field. She was married by this time, and had hopes of starting a family.

Her web site biography continues the story as follows: "Two days after the 2000 Olympic Trials, Vonetta's husband, Johnny, spotted a flyer urging Track and Field athletes to tryout for the U.S. bobsled team. The only thing Vonetta and Johnny knew about bobsledding was what they learned from the movie, "Cool Runnings." Johnny had also been an outstanding Track and Field athlete, even so, their chances seemed so slim that the idea of them making the team became more and more amusing.

Regardless, Vonetta really was not interested. She was still dealing with the reality that she would not live out her lifelong dream of competing in the Olympics. After several hours of joking back and forth, however, she agreed to accompany Johnny as he tried out for the team. Shortly after the competition started, Johnny pulled his hamstring, and Vonetta agreed to live out his dream by completing the six-item test. That unselfish act would quickly change their lives.

"Less than two months after stepping in for Johnny, Vonetta was competing for the U.S. in bobsled, traveling to foreign countries and eating foods the names of which she couldn't even pronounce. Vonetta's track and field background was an advantage in bobsled, and she quickly became the number-one brake woman in the U.S. By the end of her rookie season, Vonetta and her former teammate, Bonny Warner, were ranked second in the U.S. and third in the world.

"A year later Vonetta and her new partner, Jill Bakken, slid into history by winning the Gold Medal at the inaugural Women's Olympic bobsled event, which was the first medal for a U.S. bobsled team in 46 years. Vonetta became the first person of African descent to win a Gold Medal in the Winter Olympics."

Vonetta, who has since her Olympic victories become known as an inspirational speaker of faith, gives credit to God for her accomplishments and blessings. "God has blessed my family. I give Him the glory and honor," she has stated. The Flowers now have twin sons, born the same year Vonetta won the gold. And she is in training for anticipated further Olympic competition.

Back when her dreams seemed to be slipping away and before her bobsledding successes, Vonetta relied on her faith to keep her strong and hopeful. She continues to cling to that faith today. On her web site, she cites II Timothy 1:7 as one source of strength for her, particularly during challenging times: "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and discipline."

Ms Flowers' appearance at Tusculum College comes about primarily through the efforts of two faculty members, Assistant Professor of Physical Education Karyn Spencer, and Associate Professor of Physical Education Sally Ford, with support from the Institutional Advancement Office of Tusculum College and interested individuals and groups in the community.