Grace hoped to do better in the high jump event because she tied for second place at the 2014 Junior Olympics. She also won sixth place in 2015.
“ After I thought about it, I realized that a lot of people would have been happy to take my sixth place spot,” she says.“ I will definitely be back next year.”
Grace qualified for the 200-meter sprint but decided to focus on the hurdles and high jump instead. She also competed in the 80-meter hurdles and achieved a personal record of 14.52 seconds.
“ Running with the wind blowing in your face is really fun,” she says.
Grace was inspired by watching the 2016 Olympics on television after returning home from Sacramento. Allyson Felix is her favorite runner and she won gold in the women’ s 4x100 and 4x400 meter relays and silver in the women’ s 400-meter sprint.
“ She’ s very relaxed when she runs, and her reaction at the start is very good,” Grace explains.“ She smiles at the end too, which is very nice.”
Felix ran from lane four, which is now Grace’ s favorite starting position. She wants to improve her reaction time because she noticed that many other runners at the Junior Olympics hesitated when the starting shot was fired.“ My goal is to be the first one out of the blocks,” she says. Grace started running when she was six years old. She was living in Texas as the time and she beat older boys in the neighborhood in several races.“ It was the first clue she had a natural running ability,” says her mother, Yvette. Grace runs on the Wings of Moon team. Yvette says she will support her dream to compete in the Olympics, but notes that her daughter will have to put in a lot of hard work and make sacrifices. However, she won’ t pressure her to aim for the Olympics either.
“ We will support her in the sport she loves and excels at,” she says.“ The future is the future.” n
Moon Township | Winter 2016 | icmags. com 11