Awesome Dawes

Florence Griffith Joyner had a tremendous impact in Track/Field. She set world records that are now, still not broken. At the 1988 Olympic trials, Florence

Mary Lou Retton is the greatest gymnast ever. She was the first American gymnast to win the gold, for male and females. In this paper, I'm going to be telling you about Mary Lou's childhood, her Olympic experience and her achievements.

Clearly, Laurie’s biggest accomplishment is performing in the 2016 Rio Olympics, but nobody know what led up to that. Laurie met Maggie Haney when she was only six years old at her first gymnastic class. It was then Haney pushed Hernandez to attend the USA Gymnastics development camps at age nine, which, of course, she excelled at. (Laurie)

When she was young her parents noticed that she had a real talent and made sure that she always had the right training. Her talent was first noticed when she was in kindergarten and she had won all the races and her teacher decided to enter her in the state competition. From then on she just improved and travelled around Australia to get coaching from the best coaches possible. Her last coach was in Melbourne and he trained her for the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Three years after the Olympics she retired from being a

Althea Gibson was born in 1927 in South Carolina to two sharecroppers on a cotton farm. Her family later during the Great depression moved to Harlem. With the support of her neighbors for money, she received lessons at the Cosmopolitan Tennis Club and in 1941, she won the ATA national championship in the girls division (Trong).Althea gibson was a great influence and role model for African Americans by being the first African American to win as many championships as she did , showing what African Americans could accomplish in tennis, and opening doors for African Americans . Althea Gibson influenced African Americans by being the being the first African American to win as many championships as she did.

Gabby changed gyms and soon became the state champ in 2004 after only four years of formal training (Gabby Douglas). She continually won first at all of the meets (Gabby Douglas).Gabby’s mom noticed that her talent was becoming too much for the gym she was training at. After watching Shawn Johnson at the 2008 Olympics and being compared to Dominique Dawes, one of the greatest African American gymnast, she knew that the Olympics were a perfect fit for her (Schoeller, Martin). The only issue she had with getting to the Olympics was her current coaching. She needed to go to West Des Moines, Iowa to train Liang Chow. He is an elite gymnastics coach known for coaching Shaun Johnson and many other gymnastics icons. With Chow, Gabby could master the necessary skills to be able to qualify for the 2012 Olympic Games. Gabby left her home at age 14. Her mom flew with her up to Chow’s Gym and scheduled a meeting with him. There Chow told Gabby that she would be living with a host family for the time she was in Iowa. At the gym that day Missy Parton introduced herself to Gabby as her her host mom (Douglas, Gabrielle). Missy took Gabby home and introduced her to her husband and three girls. Gabby and the girls hit

In 1996, the US women's soccer team won the Olympic gold medal and, in the summer of 1999, they faced down the best international competition in the World Cup beating China in the World championship game to win the grueling, month-long tournament.

She was considered a "hero" in her hometown of Clarksville, Tennessee. She was recruited by Ed Temple, to attend a track summer camp at Tennessee State University, which is where she later attended college. She devoted herself to running, and in September, 1960, she won the 100, 200, and 400 meter dash. She was the first woman to win 3 gold medals in track at a single Olympics. During the European Circuit in 1961, the French nicknamed her, "The Black Pearl", while the Italians called her, "The Black Gazelle.”

Dorothy Dandridge may seem to be like a beautiful and strong African American woman on the outside, but on the inside she held in a lot of pain. Dorothy Dandridge is an actress, singer, and entertainer, who no longer walk this green Earth, but when she did, she made history. Dorothy was the first African American actress to achieve a leading-role status. Dorothy also had a deeply troubled life and racism didn’t make her life any easier especially when it came to achieving her dreams, but she got through it and during her time, the early 1930’s through the 1960’s, that was saying something. Racism was a lot worse then what it is now, but it made it harder for African Americans to achieve their goals, especially African American women. Dorothy was very worth looking up to now and when she was alive. Dorothy Dandridge is a contribution to African American history because she was the first African American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for best actress, how she fought all odds against her, mainly racism, and she made it possible to for other African American women to follow in her footsteps and look up to her as a role model.

(Sherrow 1995) She encouraged generations of women athletes, specifically African American women athletes who were presented with so many more roadblocks to accomplishing their dreams than that of the white athletes. One athlete motivated by Wilma was Florence Griffith Joyner. Florence Griffith became the second woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics in 1988. Wilma spoke very highly of Florence, “It was a great thrill for me to see.

Cathy Freemen is an Australian athlete. Her sport that she did was sprint and her medal record are 7 gold, 2 silvers and 1 bronze in the career. She became the Olympic champion for the women's 400 m at the 2000 Summer Olympics, at which she lit the Olympic Flame. She was selected to represent Australia at the 1990 World Junior Championships in Athletics in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, she entered the semi-finals of the 100 m and was placed fifth in the finals of the 400 m. Cathy Freeman’s greatest influence on her career are her parents, she influenced Australian sport by becoming the first female Australian Aboriginal to win a gold medal at an international athletics event. She a fearless promoter of her Aboriginal culture,

Dating back to 1900, the first black person to compete in the Olympics was Constantin Henriquez de Zubiera, a rugby player that participated in the 1900 Paris Games. George Poage was a U.S hurdler who won two bronze medals and was the first African American to receive medals at the 1904 Olympic games in St. Louis, Montana. The first American track and field star was John Baxter Taylor who won a gold medal at the 1908 London Games with his relay team. In an individual event, DeHart Hubbard became the first African American to win gold in the long jump competition at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Alice Coachman placed first at the 1948 London Olympics taking home a gold medal as a high jumper. This was the first gold medal won by an African American

But it was during the early and mid 1990s that Canadian women, given a decade's access to the sport, began to dominate. 1990 brought gold in the LW4- and HW4-. The latter had finished second last the previous year.i Additional success in 1990 included a silver medal in the HW1x, and bronze (by 0.06 seconds) in the LW2x. The 1992 Olympics saw gold awarded to the HW2-, the HW4-, and the HW8+, a great showing of the women's national team, which was happily received by the Canadian public.ii The next year, at the World University Games RCA was responsible for 13 medals, which included many women who had started rowing for their respective university teams.iii

One of the first women’s track team formed at the all black Tuskegee institute in 1929. Three years after Louise Stokes and Tidye Pickett qualified for the 1932 Olympics in track and field but they were not allowed to participate in Los Angeles because of their race. In Berlin in 1936, Stokes and Pickett became the first African American women to represent their country in the Olympics. Alice Coachman, a star track and field athlete at Tuskegee became the first black woman to win Olympic

One is that she is the most decorated female gymnast. She holds that record with fourteen championship medals. She is also the first African American gymnast that won an all- around world title. She is the third American women to be in an all-around national championship four times in a row. She is the shortest Olympic gymnast out of all 555 Olympic gymnasts. She is four feet nine inches. She only weighs 104 pounds. She is also has the record for most gold medals won by a female gymnast. She hold that record with ten gold medals. She has won every tournament she has entered in the P&G Championship since 2013. She has won twelve titles in a row. In all of the twelve titles she has scored over 62 points. While on a few gymnast are able to get 60. She has fourteen total medals for world championships. That the most for a female gymnast ever. In 2013 to 2015, she won ten gold medals in world championship. In 2013 to 2016, she won eleven United States national gold medals in championships. Simone Biles, only 19 years old, took home four gold medals in St. Louis at the 2016 nationals. She was part of the “Final Five” at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janerio.