Chasing Grace

by Sanya Richards-Ross

  In 2004, when I decided to become a professional athlete, getting an agent was the first task. At the time, I thought I would continue training with Coach Kearney, and she told me there were only two people she would work with. I met with both and opted to work with Renaldo Nehemiah.

  He was a world-class hurdler and world-record holder at one time. He came well dressed, with an impressive presentation. He was convincing, and as a young teenager on the brink of a pro career, I looked forward to his mentorship. I knew what I wanted to accomplish in the sport and the importance of having great people around me. I was optimistic that our relationship would be long-term and successful.

  Once the season got underway, I realized he was not the mentor and teacher I had hoped for and that it did not look like it was going to work out in the end. He didn’t check in on my progress, rarely attended my competitions, and on the whole just didn’t give me the time and attention I had received from my coaches and thought I deserved.

  On one occasion, I called him about prize money I had earned. I’ll never forget his response.

  “Didn’t I just pay you? What do you need money for so soon?”

  I was shocked. It was my money, and he had no right to keep it from me or question why I wanted it. Thankfully he did send me the money in the end.

  Based on the rules of our governing body, the IAAF, an agent can’t sign an athlete for more than one year, so as soon as the year was up, I terminated my contract and hired my mom and dad to be my full-time agents.

  Renaldo had negotiated my Nike contract for four years. My initial deal ran from 2004 to 2008. I ended my working relationship with Renaldo in 2005. In 2006, having completed a full year of working with my parents, we renegotiated the contract with Nike. I was so happy. I was now one of the highest-paid female sprinters, had a wonderful working relationship with everyone on my team, and continued to pay Renaldo his fees from the original contract until 2008.

  Renaldo’s agency took the payments and then sued me for more.

  I couldn’t believe it. I was devastated. How could a star athlete, who knew just how hard it is to save that kind of money in our sport, do this to me?

  At nineteen years old, I signed an agreement that tied his agency to my Nike contract in perpetuity. Of course, I had no idea what it meant and felt I had done my due diligence when I asked our trusted lawyer to look over it and give it his stamp of approval.

  I fought hard, went to an arbitrator, and pleaded my case.

  I paid taxes, agent fees, housing expenses in Waco, and coaching fees, as well as tithing on a regular basis. Many times, I only took home 25 to 30 percent of what I generated. I understood the law, but hoped the arbitrator would find a compromise that was fair.

  Renaldo Nehemiah walked into a team room on the University of Texas campus, after a lifetime’s worth of training and sacrifice by my family and myself, worked for one year, and was entitled to almost $300,000 of my earnings?

  How could that be right?

  When the arbitrator came back with the ruling, my heart sank. It was a tough way for a young professional to learn a lesson. I think that relationship scarred me to a point where I was skeptical to really let people in, which is why the turning point in 2009 was significant. I broke down those walls and let the Lord take over, and He showed me the truly good people I had around me. Their love and loyalty stood out.

  I try to always keep my eyes forward and my head up, and by looking ahead, it’s easier to see good. I challenged myself to make something positive out of a negative situation, and a positive that came from my relationship with Renaldo was my partnership with my first major sponsor. A company world-renowned for supporting and building the brands and stories for athletes in every sport, Nike has a reputation that needs little introduction. In the sports world, it stands alone.

  As my career grew, I became more and more connected to the financial support and emotional connection of this brand. From billboards to training shoes, Nike has given me some of the greatest shine a young girl from Kingston could have ever hoped for. I worked with the best in the business. Not only valued as an athlete, I felt like part of the team. They’ve invited me to meet with innovators to provide input for spikes and racing kits and allowed me to tour the world as an ambassador. Nike was and continues to be my sports family.

  The track, where I am most driven and consumed with competitive desire, is actually the one place that truly taught me to love my neighbor as myself.

  The reality of the sport I love is that it requires a tremendous amount of financial support to compete at an elite level. Literally it takes a team of people around me to make my success possible, day in and day out. These professionals have dedicated their entire lives to support a single aspect of my career. Take Adrik, for example, who traveled to stay with me in Texas for weeks at a time and accompany me to all my competitions. Without his expert hands, my sore and aching muscles would have never recovered at the rate necessary to compete in events around the globe. He spent time with me to understand the unique intricacies of how my body responds to training, traveling, and the tactical components of my stride.

  At the center of all these professions is the athlete—me. My production on the track is what financially enables these professionals to also do what they love. I see it as a blessing to be a blessing—that by using my gift and succeeding in my sport, I am able to help others realize their dreams.

  POSITION

  What I learned from the track, the place where I am most driven and consumed with competitive desire, is actually how to love my neighbor as myself.

  It’s important to win and to give your best, but not at the cost of missing out on the joy that comes when you open your heart and develop the relationships around you.

  In the end, it won’t be the medals or the promotions that mean the most; it will be the people and the memories you create along the way.

  Empower others to be their best and to lead from behind. You operate best when you aren’t trying to fill every role yourself but trusting the people on your team to do their part.

  God wants us to love each other, to lean on each other, and to make each other better.

  Chapter 11

  GLAM & GOLD

  Leaping on Faith

  “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”

  MATTHEW 6:25–26

  One of the things that Dr. Corley had challenged me to do was explore new opportunities off the track. He taught me that to run the best races of my life, I needed to realize that racing couldn’t be my entire life. I had to allow myself to find new projects and follow new passions. In order to enhance my focus on the track, I began to widen my horizon. If the track was all I had, I’d hold it too closely, and that wasn’t healthy. I experienced that in Beijing.

  My family’s bond has always been a thing of fascination for people when they meet us. I started dreaming about creating our own family reality show. I thought we had all the components for a hit television series.

  Ross and I were discovering new joy as newlyweds; my sister and I had just opened our own hair salon; Mom and Dad were quite the characters acting as my parents and managers; and my cousin Yollie was doing all my media outreach and styling.

  I plotted out story lines and scripted out all the characters. What started as some doodling in a notebook grew into a forty-slide PowerPoint presentation. Through my management at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), I was connected to Katie Maloney, an unscripted TV agent. She appreciated the work I had put into the concept of my show and worked diligently to orchestrate meetings with different networks

  The process wasn’t quick—it lasted about four years from concept to development, actually going from boardroom to boardroom
and presenting the concept to talent agents for different networks. Sometimes I went alone, talking through my ideas, but Katie suggested that Mom and Yollie accompany me so the networks could see the reality of our relational dynamic.

  Yollie and Mom were in the room for the presentation with WeTv, the network that eventually agreed to produce the show.

  I was over the moon. I had admired Rev. Run’s family show Run’s House for so long and wanted to be the “Jamerican” version of that. Angela Simmons, daughter of the legendary Rev. Run from the hip-hop group Run DMC, and I were just quickly becoming friends, and she gave me the contact to her production company.

  As a family, we were always a team, but this would be different. It was no longer all of us working together behind the scenes and me representing us on the field.

  On the show, we’d all stand together in front of the camera.

  But the reality of reality TV wasn’t exactly what I expected. When your show has finally been given the green light, it takes anywhere from six to nine months before you ever film. The story lines you sell are real and organic then, but half a year later, they’re old and a distant memory. It was hard to go back and deliver on story lines that were no longer our reality.

  For instance, my sister and her now-husband Tyrell had just started dating. Tyrell was one of Ross’s best friends from college. The beginning of Shari and Tyrell’s relationship was rocky. Shari felt Tyrell was “the one” from early on in their relationship (like most girls do, in my opinion), but he wasn’t so convinced. They had great moments, but they also had epic fights and breakups that made both Ross and me question the stability of their relationship.

  About four weeks before we started filming for our new show, Shari and Tyrell had one of their worst fights. It started over the simplest thing. My sister is a huge Beyoncé fan and would never miss a performance or television appearance. So the minute it was announced that Beyoncé was doing the halftime show at the Super Bowl, we couldn’t wait.

  Ross and I hosted a small watch party. Nichole, my best friend, and her husband, Tevin, joined us as well. I couldn’t tell you which two teams were playing—when Ross wasn’t on the field, it didn’t mean as much to me. For my sister and me, it was the Beyoncé Bowl, and we were watching, front and center.

  Tyrell was just getting to know Shari, but upon meeting my sister you know two things: don’t mess with her hair, and don’t talk about Beyoncé. I don’t remember exactly what Tyrell said, but it turned into a war of words like I’d never heard before.

  As he went on and on about Beyoncé’s performances always being the same, Shari put her fingers in her ears and began to hum over his comments.

  “You’re so childish.”

  “I could never marry someone like you!”

  Shari was crushed.

  She fired back as we began to get up, “You’ll never have to worry about that!”

  Shari was in tears, devastated by how quickly a small argument had escalated to a full-blown fight. My show producers and I were in constant communication up to this point—talking every day or so, crafting story lines. I told them what had transpired between Shari and Tyrell.

  However, by the time we started filming, Shari and Tyrell were doing much better. They had worked through their early-stage woes and were getting into fewer arguments and building a stronger bond.

  Once the producers were in town, they wanted to see the old Shari and Tyrell we had sold months before we started filming. Ironically, when something is behind you, you don’t realize how easy it is to oversell it. In many of the scenes with Shari and Tyrell, in an effort to meet and in some ways exceed everyone’s expectations of him, Tyrell oversold his character.

  There were so few scenes that showed their infatuation with each other, and that was a mistake.

  We had many regrets over how we were portrayed in our first time on TV. There were glimmers of our real personalities, but we never got in a groove or had an opportunity to fully be ourselves.

  It was disappointing. My hope all along was to show a loving family that inevitably had conflicts and issues but always overcame them with integrity, humor, and love.

  I never felt we were forced to do anything. Like many projects, sometimes it just gets off track, and you can’t reel it back in.

  There were other moments of give-and-take that changed the scope of my original project. I wanted to call the show Running Things—a woman running things on the track and in the workplace—but the producers liked Glam & Gold.

  After the first episode, a new producer joined the team. He wanted more drama, more conflict, and more jaw-dropping moments. After filming the third episode, I wanted to push back. I wanted to go back to my original vision, but I didn’t trust my instincts.

  It was disappointing when the final product wasn’t what I foresaw, and the show wasn’t renewed for a second season.

  I’m content with trying and failing, a lesson I learned over and over on the track, but this failure felt different. I was the first track and field athlete to walk into a room with high-level executives and win herself a reality TV show. I was confident and poised, and they liked that. They saw the potential in me. But midway through the project, I let fear and doubt creep in.

  Maybe they know better, I told myself. Maybe we do need more drama, more action.

  I allowed myself to be swayed by others’ opinions when I should have been more grounded in my own convictions. It felt like when I lost the World Championships race to Tonique. I was disappointed because I moved away from my inner guidance. I didn’t trust the power of my own vision.

  God’s delay was actually my blessing. If the show had continued for another season, my family would have continued to be misrepresented and the lightheartedness of our dysfunction misconstrued for the value of ratings.

  Although the landscape of reality TV keeps evolving, with more and more outlandish and unbelievable story lines and characters, I know it’s important to have positive shows, especially in the black community, and I hope at the right time we’ll be given an opportunity again.

  POSITION

  I believe it’s OK to ask God why you find yourself in a particular circumstance. But you have to be ready to hear His answer.

  Many times we want something so badly, and God in His infinite wisdom allows us to see whether it’s good or bad for us. Some blessings in life blossom outside of their season, but the journey always equips us with knowledge if we allow ourselves to be open and learn along the way.

  It’s important to try new things—to go for it. But always know that God ultimately has the final say and always knows what’s best.

  POISE

  Commit to the Finish

  Chapter 12

  LEAN IN

  Trusting the Plan

  Those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

  ISAIAH 40:31

  I hold a special fondness for the track at Hayward Field. It’s filled with amazing historical moments, a place where legends are born. I was hoping this audience would see me do something great.

  The Prefontaine Classic is competed annually, and in an Olympic year, it is America’s marquee tune-up race. Hayward Field is home to both the Classic and the Olympic Trials, which were set for the last week of June. “The Pre” in 2012 felt like a practice for the trials, because all the big names were there.

  The stadium was electric with anticipation. The community of Eugene, which is home to a huge tribe of runners, embraces track and field. More than mere spectators in the stadium, these are knowledgeable, informed runners who scan the horizon to witness what most believe is impossible.

  On race day, I was happy for the presence of my family and their easy conversation at breakfast. It was a very calm start to the day, which is nice, because from there, everything accelerated.

  Seeing Dad on the track that day gave me a calm sense of comfort, like I
was going into battle with a friend. As I jogged, stretched, got a massage, and progressed through my drills, I reflected on just how blessed I was to always have him in my corner.

  I can only imagine the caliber of athlete my dad would have been had he received even an ounce of the gentle nurturing and guidance he poured into me. Family members and friends tell me he was a natural on the soccer field. In Jamaica, I’m better known as Archie’s daughter than as an Olympic champion.

  Because there were few recordings when my father played, I have had to enjoy his talent as told through the many fans who enjoyed his legendary ability to dribble past his competitors and cause them to fall off balance, his innate ability to score corner kicks, and his swag and charisma on the field. My mom mostly recalls that. Dad represented his country on the Under-19 national junior team.

  Unfortunately, his family did not understand the sports landscape or provide the support he needed to continue to reach his full potential. One of the few pointers Dad did receive was to not lift weights. Strength training was presumed to hinder speed. This is a statement I can testify is completely false, yet as a young man, Dad had no way of knowing that. So he eventually moved on, settling on soccer and sports as just hobbies and vowing that if he ever had children with athletic talent, he would fight to not only protect it, but also promote it.

  My dad helped me find my competitive voice. With him by my side, I was able to discover myself. I found my passion and talent, not because he showed it to me, but because he led me to it.

  I felt courageous and powerful that day. I wasn’t just competing to fulfill my dreams and destiny; I was furthering his journey as well.

  Checking in for my race, I said one more prayer with my family and headed to the contentious call room for some final preparations. As I walked out to lane 4 that day, on the track where I felt at home, everything about my day had gone according to plan. From the time I woke up to the music I played, I had perfectly controlled everything within my power.