Flowers Shows What Happens When Someone Takes a Flier

The color combination is deep, striking, tough enough for the Pittsburgh Steelers, pretty enough for a sunflower.

But, for 78 years, absent from the Winter Olympics.

Until this week, when a bundled-up track star from the Deep South painted the town with it.

Black and gold.

Forever in the person of Vonetta Flowers, the first African American gold medalist in Winter Olympic history.

Black and gold.

How beautiful it looked.

How sadly strange it looked.

For those who dominate these winter sports, it seems that gold medals sometimes come from birth or geography.

For the first black winner, it took the miracle of a bobsledder from Birmingham, Ala.

“My husband always told me, ‘God put you in this sport for a reason,’” Flowers said Wednesday morning, shaking her head. “But I never expected to be here.”

Who would? Who could?

On Tuesday night, Flowers had teamed with Jill Bakken to finish first in the two-woman bobsled, stunning not only the German favorites but their much-hyped U.S. teammates, Jean Racine and Gea Johnson.

Gold, even though as recently as two years ago, Flowers had

never even seen a bobsled in person.

“Only in that movie ‘Cool Runnings,’” she said.

Gold, even though she tried out for the team only as a joke.

“I told her, how many of your friends in Birmingham could say they actually tried out for a bobsled team,” recalled her husband, Johnny.

Gold, even though once she made the team, she was worried her family’s modest budget wouldn’t survive the surprising, staggering expense of ... long johns.

“I hated the cold,” she said.

Gold, even though she was black.

This would not be a big deal in almost any other athletic endeavor in this country. But spend 10 minutes looking around the Winter Olympics and you realize, this is different.

This is not an open competition. These are not necessarily America’s best athletes.

Certainly, with the likes of Jennifer Rodriguez, Derek Parra and Michelle Kwan, the U.S. team is more diversified than other nations.

But of 211 Olympians, only four are black.

Our U.S. Winter Olympic playing field is about as level as the downhill run.

Where are the greatest sprinters from Florida? Can’t they learn to skate?

Where are all the linebackers from Texas? Couldn’t someone teach them how to downhill ski?

While every other sport in this country dusts every baseboard looking for the best athletes, our winter sports have it backward.

“They sit around and wait for the athletes to come to them,” said Bonny Warner, the veteran bobsled driver. “Because there’s not a lot of facilities in your backyard, if you don’t come, you can’t play.”

So while 20 athletes list their home state as Minnesota, only three list Texas.

“The great athletes are there, we just don’t look hard enough,” Warner said. “I guarantee you, if I knew the criteria for ski jumper, I could go to Florida and come back with a ski jumper.”

It was this philosophy that, in the summer of 2000, took Warner to Sacramento.

There, in the stifling heat of the Olympic track and field trials, she searched for someone to push her bobsled.

Thus Vonetta Flowers began the road to Olympic gold by ... answering a flier?

“I needed someone who was strong and fast, and this place was filled with great athletes like that,” Warner said. “So I asked the organizers if I could pass out the fliers.”

By wonderful coincidence, Flowers, a college long jump and triple jump star, struggled with an ankle injury and had a poor meet.

By an even better coincidence, her husband Johnny saw one of those fliers.

By an otherworldly coincidence, tryouts were on the one day when they were not seeing the sights.

“She was finished competing, I was in charge of the vacation, and we had gone to places like Fisherman’s Wharf and Lake Tahoe,” he said. “But I didn’t have anything planned that day.”

Still, when he drove his wife to a test that included sprinting, jumping and putting the shot, only one thing was on their minds.

“It was a joke,” he said.

“I had never even seen a bobsled up close,” she said.

But she passed the test and was invited to Germany for more tests with an actual bobsled. And now she knew this Bonny Warner was crazy.

“The hardest part was convincing her that she could win a medal in this,” Warner said. “It was like telling her, ‘Yeah, you can win a million dollars.’ And she was like, ‘Yeah, right.’”

Warner recruited four athletes from those trials. She left with one.

“Flowers was the only one who believed me,” she said.

After her first time in a bobsled a couple of months later, that belief faded.

“It was very scary,” Flowers said. “Nobody told me about the G force. When I was done, I was dizzy.”

But, remembering this was her chance for a medal, she tried it again. With her speed and powerful push, she finally made it work.

The hardest part, it turns out, was never inside the sled. It was on the streets of Birmingham.

There, people still couldn’t believe that there even existed such a thing as a bobsled.

Her husband, who works for Blue Cross, scoured the area for donations. Only three companies, including Blue Cross, offered any help.

“Nobody in Alabama could understand why anybody would want to ride in a bobsled,” he said.

To this day, Flowers has no sponsors, no endorsements, not even an agent.

And as recently as November, she didn’t even have a team.

Flowers finished in the top 10 in all seven World Cup races last season with Warner. But in October, the veteran driver asked her to compete with strong newcomer Gea Johnson for the spot of brakewoman for this season.

“Any time a new athlete like that shows up, you want to see who is the fastest, it’s nothing personal,” Warner said.

But while this choice of speed over loyalty is commonplace in the cutthroat world of bobsledding, Flowers didn’t understand it, and quit the sport.

“I was done,” she said.

“But I wasn’t going to let her quit,” said her husband.

So during November, every day at 5 a.m., before Johnny went to Blue Cross and Vonetta went to her job as assistant track coach at Alabama Birmingham, they trained.

And every night after work, they trained.

And finally, Bakken called and asked her to compete with

another brakewoman to join her team.

Flowers won the push-off, and eventually joined Bakken and headed to the Olympics.

But, of course, they were the other team.

The hot duo was Racine and Johnson. They posed for posters. They were featured in sportscasts.

Most thought Bakken and Flowers didn’t have a chance.

This is why, to some, the final chapter in Flowers’ gold rush was the most unusual of all.

On Sunday, after Johnson injured her hamstring, Racine called Flowers and asked her to switch teams one more time.

Yes, just two days before the event.

The woman who had already dropped longtime teammate Jen Davidson to add Johnson was now willing to dump Johnson and ruin another team.

Despite this nastiness, others in the sport still would have switched. After all, Racine is considered one of the best drivers in the world.

But Flowers is not like the others, and, for the last time, proved it.

“The conversation lasted about four minutes,” she said. “I told her no. I was going to be loyal to Jill.”

The bond proved stronger than all others Tuesday, and now Flowers has unwittingly been forced into another bond.

Like it or not, she must represent not only her country, but her ethnicity.

To which she responds, it’s about time.

“I just hope this medal drives younger African Americans to give the winter sports a try,” she said. “There’s just not a lot of opportunities out there.”

There’s one more today. All it took was a flier and some fearlessness.

And a snowball in hell melting on a bobsledder from Birmingham.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com