Ashford, Evelyn
Track and Field
b. April 15, 1957, Shreveport, LA
Despite injuries and Olympic disappointments, Ashford had one of the longest and most successful careers of any sprinter in history. A member of five U. S. Olympic teams, she won a total of nine medals, including four golds, three of them as a member of sprint relay teams.
Ashford was the only girl on the boys' high school track team in Roseville, CA, and she co-captained the team in her senior year. One of the first women to receive an athletic scholarship from UCLA, she finished fifth in the 100-meter dash at the 1976 Olympics the summer after her freshman year.
She won AIAW championships in the 100-meter and 200-meter dashes and the 800-meter relay in 1977, repeated in the 200-meter and finished second in the 100-meter in 1978, then left school to train full-time for the 1980 Olympics.
Ashford won both short sprints in the 1979 World Cup championships, beating two East German world record holders, Marlies Gohr in the 100-meter and Marita Koch in the 200-meter. But, like many American athletes, she was bitterly disappointed by the U. S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
So she set her sights on the 1984 Olympics. She repeated her double sprint victories in the 1981 World Cup championships. However, after winning two previous heats in the 100-meter dash at the 1983 world championships, Ashford pulled her right hamstring muscle and fell in the finals.
The hamstring continued to bother her in 1984, going into the Olympics. She withdrew from the 200-meter in order to protect her injured leg and concentrate on the 100, where she edged Heike Drechsler of East Germany to win the gold medal she had sought for so long.
Ashford was known as being reserved and unemotional, but she was in tears through her victory lap and during the medal ceremony. She said afterward, "When I caught my first glimpse of the gold medal while I waited on the victory stand, I was emotionally overcome. I couldn't believe it was over. I couldn't stop crying."
That was the culmination of her career, but not nearly the end. Ashford was also on the gold medal 4 by 100-meter relay team and, two weeks later, she ran a world record 10.76 in the 100-meter in Zurich.
Married to Herbert Washington, Ashford took 1985 off to have a daughter, Raina. She came back to win the 100-meter at the Goodwill Games.
The troublesome hamstring kept Ashford out of for much of the 1987 season. But she was on the U. S. Olympic team once again in 1988, winning a silver medal in the 100-meter and running on the gold medal relay team. And in 1992, considered "the grand old lady of track" at the age of 35, she won her fourth gold medal, again as a runner on the 4 by 100 relay team.