TOKYO (AP) — American sprinter Melissa Jefferson-Wooden has a gold medal from the world championships. Two of them, in fact.
Her biggest win of all might be that her father, Melvin, was on hand in Tokyo to watch her.
The country's brightest new sprint star donated stem cells from her bone marrow seven years ago when she was 17. It was to help her dad overcome a potentially deadly sickness in which the marrow doesn't produce enough white blood cells to enrich the immune system.
After winning the 200
meters Friday to become the first American woman to complete the sprint double at the worlds, she reflected on a decision that changed her life, and saved her dad's.
“I didn't do it just because he was my dad, but I wanted to be able to say, ‘If I had an opportunity to help someone, do it,'” Jefferson-Wooden said. “And that’s what life is about.”
Wooden's mom and dad, Johanna and Melvin Jefferson, were in the box with World Athletics President Seb Coe to watch their daughter make history. The Jefferson family travels deep, and Wooden-Jefferson said it's been rewarding to have mom and dad and aunts and uncles in Tokyo.
“They say, ‘I just can’t wait to see you go out there and make history,'" Jefferson-Wooden said. “And, hearing that from them is just like, if they can have that much faith in me, and I'm the one getting on the line, then why can't I have that faith in myself to be able to do those things?”
All this came from a 100-meter specialist who surprised her coaches at the start of this year when she said she wanted to take the 200 a little more seriously.
She began the year thinking maybe she'd be good enough to make the nationals, then maybe good enough to get on the team going to the worlds and then, finally, as someone who might contend at the worlds or maybe even win.
She passed all those tests and made it look easy. She beat Britain's Amy Hunt by .46 seconds and became the first woman to double at the worlds since Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce in 2013. Jefferson-Wooden improved to 19-1 in all races at 100 or 200 meters this season.
Now that some might be looking up to her, Jefferson-Wooden wants them to know that helping someone, or making them feel good about themselves, “means much more to me than anything I might decide to do on the track.”
“Doing what I did for my dad was obviously second nature, it was a no brainer,” she said. “But at the end of the day, it was my staple of showing the type of person that I am.”
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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games
