by Sanya Richards-Ross

If anyone thinks they are something when
they are not, they deceive themselves. Each
one should test their own actions. Then they
can take pride in themselves alone, without
comparing themselves to someone else.
GALATIANS 6:3–4

I really thought they would cancel the race. I didn’t realize they sold tickets and that there was a strict schedule to maintain. I was young. It was my second world championships—my first as one of the favorites.

This can’t be happening, I thought. Surely the organizers will reschedule. Sheets of rain covered my “oval office” in currents of water. This obsession with the uphill walk and my suddenly soaked socks really just distracted me from my main focus—Tonique Williams-Darling, the powerful runner from the Bahamas who had won Olympic gold in the 400 meters the previous summer in Athens.

In 2004, I turned professional after winning gold on the 4×400 relay at the Olympics. I didn’t medal individually, but if I had run my fastest time from that season, I would have earned bronze. That validated to me that I was ready to move beyond the grinding team schedule of college athletics and pursue my potential to be one of the world’s best.

Tonique was my main competition for the 2005 World Championships title contested on this water-soaked track in Finland. She beat me at a major track meet in the United States in June, but I had come back to beat her a month later during the European racing season. She announced her presence at the track with a regal aura. When she and her entourage arrived that day, the rain, falling harder and heavier by the minute, seemed to slide right around her. Tonique was dry as a bone. At least it seemed that way to me.

The night before the race, I had a conversation with a runner I really admired. “To win against Tonique,” he said, “you have to beat her off the curve.” My youth crippled me once again, because I didn’t have the nerve to say that when I won in Lausanne—the Swiss city that sits beside Lake Geneva and is home to the International Olympic Committee—I had to make up ground coming through the turn into the homestretch, the final 100 meters. But he said it, and I believed his advice. I wanted to know I’d be doing something different—something extra—to guarantee a win. I failed to see that the winning formula was inside me all along.

The rain was torrential, and it remained my tormentor. Coach Hart said it was the first and only time he’d ever seen a track covered in curling waves of water. Still, they lined us up to run. The last thing Coach told me before I walked out to my lane was, “Push, pace”—a reminder of the strategy we’d use to run every race. He always tells me to get out hard and then find my rhythm for the last half of the race. If I pace myself through the final turn, I can kick it down the homestretch, but that wasn’t the advice I was given the night before.

Push, pace, whatever, I said to myself. I’m beating her off the curve, and I’m winning this final.

I drew lane 3, and Tonique had lane 6. Running on the inside of your biggest rival can be, and should be, a big advantage. Pacing, movement, and position all become an auxiliary sense. When it comes time to make the turn and really race, that awareness is your friend. This time, though, Tonique became my target. I fixated on her instead of my lane and my strategy.

Coach Hart’s “push, pace” strategy tells me to power through the first 50 meters with everything I have and then transition after the first turn, throttle back, and preserve my best running for the end of the race. This time, though, I was intent on beating Tonique around the last curve, and I did. But when I got there, in front of the pack, my legs were all out of running. All of my energy had been used up chasing her. I couldn’t hold the lead.

It was all I could do to hang on and finish second in the world championships. For a twenty-year-old, second-year professional, that should feel like an accomplishment, but I was heartbroken. And not because I lost, but because I beat myself running someone else’s race. Before I ever stepped on to the track and squinted through the downpour, eagle-eyeing Tonique, I talked myself out of winning.

It was a lesson learned. “They can’t beat me if I run my best race” became a mantra I’d say before every race throughout my career. The disappointment and devastation that come when you allow the circumstances around you to create a negative mind-set were very real to me. As a young, still-maturing professional athlete, that loss in the 2005 world championships was one of the hardest things I’ve had to overcome. The moment I crossed the finish line, I knew I second-guessed myself to a second-place finish.

I was humbled after losing the world title to Tonique. Mostly, I was angry for not believing what I knew in my heart to be true: I was the fastest 400 runner in the world. A few days after the world championships race, I visited with Coach Hart and vowed to never make the same mistake again.

“Coach, I’m going to win out,” I told him. “I’m going to win the rest of my races, and I’m going to be ranked No. 1 in the world.” Usually the world champion always got the Track & Field News top ranking, but I knew if I won my final races—if I ran to my potential—I could take the top spot.

Not even two weeks later, I ran the fastest race of my life up to that point in Zurich and then closed out the season with another victory in Monaco. I ended the season ranked No. 1, and my 48.9 seconds in Zurich was the fastest time in the world that year. It also made me the youngest woman in history to ever run below 49 seconds.

Yes, Tonique raced against me both times. But it didn’t matter. I ran my race.
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Taken from Chasing Grace: What the Quarter Mile Has Taught Me about God and Life by Sanya Richards-Ross. Click here to learn more about this title.

In Chasing Grace, Sanya shares triumphant as well as heartbreaking stories as she reveals her journey to becoming a world-class runner. From her childhood in Jamaica to Athens, Beijing and London Olympics, you’ll find yourself inspired by the unique insights she’s gained through her victories and losses, including her devastating injury during the 2016 Olympic Trials forcing career retirement just weeks before Rio. Sanya demonstrates how even this devastating loss brought her closer to the ultimate goal of becoming all God created her to be.

”Sometimes you think you are chasing a gold medal, but that’s not what you are chasing. You’re racing to become the best version of yourself.”

Sanya Richards-Ross is a Jamaican-American track and field athlete who competes internationally for the United States. She is the fastest American woman in history at 400 meters and the winner of multiple Olympic gold medals. Off the track, Sanya is an entrepreneur, TV personality, public speaker, and humanitarian. She designs and executes sports clinics across the United States to educate, empower, and teach youth with tools and strategies to excel both on and off the track. Sanya is married to two-time Super Bowl champion Aaron Ross and they live in Austin, TX.

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