By the time I was 12 I was challenging every boy in our neighborhood at running, jumping, everything.

My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces.

Black women . . . work because their husbands can't make enough money at their jobs to keep everything going. . . . They don't go to work to find fulfillment, or adventure, or glamour and romance, like so many white women think they are doing. Black women work out of necessity.

I know black women in Tennessee who have worked all their lives, from the time they were twelve years old to the day they died. These women don't listen to the women's liberation rhetoric because they know that it's nothing but a bunch of white women who had certain life-styles and who want to change those life-styles.

I believe in me more than anything in this world.

When I was going through my transition of being famous, I tried to ask God, why was I here? What was my purpose? Surely, it wasn't just to win three gold medals. There has to be more to this life than that.

My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.