Introduction
You’ve probably watched the Summer Olympics and Paralympics on television: Runners and wheelchair racers, tearing down the track at lightning speed. Gymnasts, all power and grace as they spin around the bars and flip across the floor. Swimmers, swiftly powering through the water, as smoothly as fish.
For many young athletes around the world, competing at the Olympics is the ultimate dream. But long before they made it to international competitions, all the Olympians in this book were little kids who liked to run, jump, and play . . . a lot!
Gymnast Nadia Comăneci liked jumping on beds and climbing trees—including, on one occasion, the Christmas tree in her living room. From the time she could speak, swimmer Ellie Simmonds constantly asked her mom what they would be doing that day—she needed to be busy and active. And many years before he became the world’s fastest sprinter, Usain Bolt was exhausting his parents by running everywhere and climbing everything.
Some of these Olympians had parents who helped them get involved in sports at a very young age. Nadia Comăneci’s mother signed her up for gymnastics at five, to give her an outlet for her endless energy. Yusra Mardini’s dad was a swimming coach who started teaching her to swim when she was just four. Serena Williams’s father started even earlier: he wrote a plan for Serena’s tennis training before she was even born!
Older siblings also played an important role for many of these Olympians. Megan Rapinoe used to watch her older brother play soccer and copied all his moves. When Yusra Mardini was little, her big sister Sara led the way at the pool—and when war came to their country, she led Yusra to safety in Europe as well.
Yusra wasn’t the only athlete who had to overcome difficult circumstances on her way to the Olympics. Wilma Rudolph survived polio and had to learn to walk again before she could run. Jesse Owens faced racist laws and attitudes as a child, as a college student, and at the 1936 Olympic Games in Nazi Germany. Wheelchair racer Tatyana McFadden spent her first five years in a Russian orphanage, where she didn’t have access to a wheelchair. And Gertrude Ederle grew up in a time when girls weren’t encouraged to do sports at all—and when women had to wear long skirts and stockings to swim!
As kids, these future Olympians didn’t all start out looking like stars. At Michael Phelps’s first swimming lesson, he threw a tantrum because he didn’t want to get his face wet. High jumper Dick Fosbury was mocked for his unconventional style. And Naomi Osaka didn’t particularly like hitting tennis balls—she just wanted to beat her older sister!
Although it takes a lot of hard work and commitment to get to the Olympics, these athletes didn’t always feel like practicing. Simone Biles was torn between her love of gymnastics and her desire to go to school and hang out with her friends. Serena Williams sometimes hit her tennis ball over the fence on purpose, so she’d have an excuse to take a break. Usain Bolt used to skip after-school practices to go to the arcade.
In the end, they all had the determination to keep going, even when the odds seemed stacked against them. They made it to the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games. They won medals, shattered records, broke new ground, and used their voices to speak up for what mattered to them.
And every one of them was once a kid who had a dream—and dared to follow it.
Copyright © 2024 by Robin Stevenson; illustrated by Allison Steinfeld. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
