Cheryl Toussaint
Cheryl Toussaint at the 1972 Olympica Training Camp
Cheryl Toussaint hadn’t done any formal running when she showed up at a track meet in her neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, at age 13. Though she sometimes raced boys and girls in the neighborhood, her primary athletic activity at the time was handball, which she played at the local park.
She went to the meet with her friends, wearing a dress and sandals. Once they were there, her friends teased her about lining up against real athletes. She decided, why not? She traded clothes with her girlfriend, put on jeans and sneakers, and came in fourth in the 100-meter dash.
The competition drew her in—but she was even more intrigued by what she saw afterward. The three girls in front of her, who all wore matching uniforms, gathered in the infield by their coach, Fred Thompson. She could feel the respect they had for him, and their sense of belonging. She got up her nerve to ask if she could join.
“I realized that it was the thing that I was missing in my life. I needed to be a part of something that was organized, that was structured,” she says. Her home life was happy—she lived with her mother and grandmother—but they worked long hours in factories to get by, and Cheryl was curious about other options. “It offered opportunities to be better.”
Thompson was also born and raised in Brooklyn and stayed in New York through college and law school. He then served in the Army for a few years. When he returned, he decided to help kids in the neighborhood overcome the challenges that tempted them—things like gangs and drugs—through participating in track.
Fred and Cheryl
“Fred was a no-nonsense kind of guy,” Cheryl says. “He was doing it with a purpose in mind. And that purpose was to inspire and motivate the kids in our community to see that they had a pathway, a better life if they wanted to choose it.”
Thompson was strict—he checked report cards and suspended girls from the team if their grades were sub-par. It was tough for Cheryl at first, but eventually, she thrived. By age 15, she qualified for the AAU national championships, where she’d run against worthy competitors like Francie Larrieu—our guest on the previous episode.
When Cheryl won the 800 meters there, she was asked to compete at the 1968 Olympic Trials. She wasn’t quite ready yet, mentally or physically, but she went to gain the experience—the top three make the team, and she came in sixth. “I realized I had something special and I wanted to see just where and how far it could take me,” she says. From there, she set her sights on the 1972 Games.
Cheryl began competing internationally, traveling to places she could only have dreamed about before—France, China, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Romania. She excelled at the 800 meters and became a specialist at the 4x400-meter relay. At the Pan American Games in Cali, Colombia, in 1971, she helped Team USA win gold in the event.
At the same time, she remained dedicated to her studies. New York University didn’t have a women’s track team, but her academic achievements earned her a scholarship. So she enrolled, and continued training with Thompson and the Atoms. She also began lending a hand with Thompson’s new venture—the Colgate Women’s Games, an amateur track meet designed to offer even more girls and women the chance to excel in life through athletics.
She’d play an even bigger role there in the future, but in the early 1970s, Cheryl was focused on one huge goal: that Olympic team. The Olympic Trials to qualify were nerve-wracking, she says, because of the depth of American running at the time.
The night before, she couldn’t sleep. “I just kept seeing the race over and over and over,” she says. “I ran the race in my mind with options for however it would go so many times that when it actually happened, I was ready and I was able to respond. I don’t think I’ve ever done that with any other race.” She placed second to Madeline Manning Mims and knew she was headed to Munich.
Cheryl in the 1972 Olympic 4x400ms
The Games were emotional for many reasons. First, because she started out too fast, she failed to qualify for the finals in the 800 meters. Then, infamously, 11 Israeli athletes were kidnapped from the Olympic Village and killed. Though they debated canceling the rest of the Games, officials eventually decided the importance of what they stood for couldn’t be lost, and so they resumed.
Shortly after, trying her best to gather her thoughts, Cheryl lined up for the third leg of the 4x400 meters. As she awaited the baton, a runner from another team dropped hers and bent to pick it up. In the ensuing confusion, another runner stepped on Cheryl’s shoe, dislodging it. Cheryl kicked it off, ran the whole leg barefoot, and got the team to the finals, where they won silver.
Coming back home an Olympic medalist, Cheryl felt a new sense of joy—and duty. “There were a couple of things that I felt marked my life. One was graduating from college—that was monumental, no one in my family had ever done it,” she says. “The other was winning the Olympic medal. It’s something very few people do or get to do. It holds such esteem. I felt like it gave me the opportunity to let others see and know, and maybe even feel that they could do it too.”
Her primary goal achieved, Cheryl felt called to make a difference in the lives of other young girls and women. She continued running but poured more of her energy into other ventures, including the Colgate Women’s Games. She assisted Thompson until he retired in 2014, and then she became meet director.
The event, which will mark its 49th season next year, allows girls and women from across the country to compete—free of charge, thanks to support from long-time sponsor Colgate-Palmolive—and win not only medals but also thousands of dollars in scholarships. Many future Olympians have competed there, including Athing Mu, Ajee Wilson, Dalilah Muhammad, and Nia Ali. Cheryl can often tell early on when an athlete is destined for greatness, and in this episode, she reveals a name to remember.
But she knows there are many other women who have gone on to great success in other fields too. If she wants the competitors—and women everywhere—to know anything, it’s that they shouldn’t limit themselves or their ambitions in any field. “I never would have dreamed that I would have been an Olympian when I first started running track and running with the Atoms,” she says. “You never know where things will take you.”
Note about the author: Cindy Kuzma is a freelance writer, author, and podcaster based in Chicago, and part of the leadership team for Starting Line 1928. She contributes regularly to Runner’s World, Women’s Running, SELF, and more; is co-author of Breakthrough Women’s Running: Dream Big and Train Smart and Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries; and co-host of The Injured Athletes Club podcast.
