This Friday’s featured female is: Anne Abernathy
I am so pumped this week to bring you this week’s Friday’s Featured Female. Anne is a recurve target archer from Tuscon, AZ, but that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of who Anne really is!
“Anne is an incredible person with a fascinating history. She is a six time Winter Olympian in the sport of luge representing her home, the US Virgin Islands. Fun fact: her first Olympics was at the 1988 games in Calgary along with the first Jamaican bobsled team. She was the first athlete in history to reach this six-time Olympic achievement and has the Guinness World Record for being the oldest athlete to compete in the winter Olympics.
Her 30+ life career came to an end when she was in a crash that broke her back at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. During her recovery she decided to write a book about the history of the Olympics and in her research learned that the oldest woman to have won an Olympic gold medal, Linda Peyton Pollock age 63, did so in the sport of archery in 1904. She credits this bit of knowledge as her inspiration and motivation to complete her recovery and pursue a new athletic career as an archer.
Anne is looking to make history again as the first person to have competed in seven Olympics, this time as an archer. She has been training for the last six years, dedicating her life with laser-like focus to train and qualify for the Tokyo 2020 games. This alone is plenty to make anyone’s eyes go wide but there is so much more to Anne.
She is the founder and executive secretary of the US Virgin Islands Archery Federation. She’s an award winning motivational speaker, was a professional singer in her life prior to being a luge athlete. Anne is also a cancer survivor, battling Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma since the start of her Olympic career to this day. She’s an extraordinary human being who often goes under the radar for most people. Her story is so incredible it often catches people off-guard that someone so unassuming can have such a history making life.
She’s also a very kind, generous and endlessly optimistic person. Anne lives her life dreaming of the seemingly impossible. She makes every effort to keep a positive attitude and be a motivating example for others. She’s proof that the hard, dedicated work you do when no one watches is what brings you into the light of history.”
I want to stop here and take a quick moment to thank Anne’s nominator. I feel like NOT hearing Anne’s story would have been a huge loss for me and everyone reading this, so huge thanks to you for sharing this with us! Anne, I hope you get the chance to read this, and I hope you know what a true inspiration you are for others. We applaud you!!!
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