Ashford, Evelyn (1957—)

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Ashford, Evelyn (1957—)

American track-and-field athlete who won four gold medals while competing in three Olympic Games. Born on April 15, 1957, in Shreveport, Louisiana; attended University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA); married Ray Washington; children: daughter Rana (Raina).

Competed in Olympics (1976); won Olympic gold medal in 100-meters and 4x100-meter relay (1984); won Olympic gold medal in 4x100-meter relay (1988); won Olympic gold medal in 4x100-meter relay (1992); recipient Flo Hyman award, Women's Sports Foundation, 1989.

At the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Canada, a 19-year-old unknown sprinter named Evelyn Ashford surprised the crowd by placing 5th in the 100-meter race. After her impressive performance, she returned home to California to begin four years of intensive training for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Three years later, she was ready. At the 1979 Montreal World Cup Meet, she turned in impressive wins over East Germany's Marlies Göhr and Marita Koch , two of the world's best women sprinters. In doing so, Ashford replaced Göhr as the favorite for the 100-meter Olympic gold medal in 1980. As Ashford trained for what appeared to be her best chance, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and President Jimmy Carter decided that the United States would boycott the Moscow Olympiad in protest. Ashford's dream, along with those of hundreds of other American athletes, was put on hold.

Evelyn Ashford was born on April 15, 1957, in Shreveport, Louisiana. As the daughter of an air-force sergeant, she and her brother and three sisters grew up moving from one military base to another. In high school, Ashford joined the boy's track team, since a girls' team was nonexistent. By her senior year, she had gained regional and statewide recognition.

In 1975, the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) offered her a track scholarship under the tutelage of Pat Connolly , who had recently been hired as the women's track coach. In Ashford's first 100-meter time trial, she ran so fast that Connolly thought she had misread the stopwatch. For the next ten years, Connolly would train Ashford. Some say she saw in Ashford

the Olympic gold that had so often eluded her during her own career in the '50s. "She was like my mother for a few years," Ashford told a reporter. "She took my parents' place in my mind and maybe in hers, but after 1980 I kind of woke up. We were still friends but not mother-daughter. I grew up. It was hard for both of us."

In 1979, Ashford lost interest in her studies, dropped out of UCLA, and went to work in a shoe store, making it more difficult to put in the long hours of needed practice. Though Connolly agreed to continue training her, they began to have philosophical differences regarding coaching style. Ashford finally decided to let her husband Ray Washington, coach of men's basketball at Mount San Jacinto Junior College, take over her training, and Connolly bowed out gracefully.

Evelyn Ashford was so devastated by Carter's boycott of the Soviet Olympics that she seriously considered giving up her track career. But while taking a cross-country car trip with her husband, she contemplated the future, and returned home intent on studying fashion design and training for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. "I still had the burning desire to get a gold medal, so I decided to go ahead and try for it again." For a second time, she began to gain recognition and topple records. She won the World Cup sprints in 1981, and, in 1983, again beat Göhr, establishing a world-record time of 10.79. That same year, at the World Championship in Helsinki, Finland, Ashford suffered a setback when she pulled a hamstring halfway through the race and lost to Göhr. Then, at the U.S. Trials, though she barely won the 100-meter final due to a pulled right leg muscle, she recovered in the 200.

It didn't matter to Ashford that her deferred Olympic dream would not be played out on foreign soil. She was just as pleased to perform amid friends and family in her home state of California. In pay-back fashion, the Soviet Union and some of its allies boycotted the 1984 California games. Ashford remained confident, even against her nemesis. When she lost to Göhr in Helsinki, she had made a prediction about the 1984 Olympic gold: "It's going to me or Göhr, and it's going to be me."

It was Ashford. The 27-year-old not only beat out Göhr in the 100-meter, but she also set a new Olympic record of 10.97 seconds, becoming the first woman to run under 11 seconds in the history of the games. A second gold was won anchoring the 4x100-meter relay with teammates Alice Brown, Jeanette Bolden , and Chandra Cheeseborough . Her dream realized, Ashford enjoyed the economic benefits that come with gold medals, including lucrative endorsements and an opportunity to become a reporter for "World Class Woman," a cable television program about women athletes. Yet another deferred dream, the birth of daughter Raina, was realized in May 1985.

The year following Raina's birth, after losing the 40 pounds she had gained during pregnancy, Ashford ranked first in the world in the 100-meters for the fourth time and ran a 10.88, the best 100-meter time in the world for 1986. In February of that year, at the Vitalis Olympic Invitations, she won the 55-meter dash in 6.6 seconds. These wins added interesting statistics to the controversial issue of childbirth and athletics. "Motherhood made me a better runner," she said. "My endurance was better. I could run a mile, two miles, or four miles and have fantastic times. I could lift the same weight I lifted before I got pregnant. But it did take a while to get the sprinting speed back."

The 1988 Seoul Olympics brought Ashford another gold medal in the 400-meter relay and a silver in the 100-meter dash, putting her in the same league as Wilma Rudolph and Wyomia Tyus as a career triple gold-medal winner. Another victory in the 100-meter relay at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Spain, capped Ashford's brilliant career with a fourth gold medal.