Olympian Chaunté Lowe on Running Your Own Race

Southern California, 1988. A four-year-old girl watches the Summer Olympics in Seoul and is mesmerized by track and field phenom Florence Griffith-Joyner’s triple gold medal wins for Team USA. Between Flo-Jo’s jaw-dropping athleticism and Whitney Houston’s soul-stirring Olympic anthem “One Moment in Time,” little Chaunté Howard made up her mind then and there: she was GOING to be an Olympian.

And so she did. But the road to the Olympics had a number of twists and turns for the little girl who would grow up to become world-class athlete and inspirational speaker Chaunté Lowe. In her General Session remarks, Lowe shared how her difficult and humble beginnings almost caused her to give up on her dreams, until her loving and supportive grandmother intervened. “She injected me with hope,” said Lowe. At nine years of age, Lowe was homeless, sleeping in cars, and living in motels when her grandmother took her to a high school football game because she wanted Lowe to see what was happening at halftime: a high school athlete being awarded a full scholarship to college.

Lowe then recounted what her grandma said to her after that ceremony. “The life you’re living right now doesn’t dictate who you can become. Education can change your life forever.”

Lowe took those words to heart—and began training for the Olympics, doing burpees and stadium stairs, running up to the penultimate stair then tapping the top one. An older girl on the team asked her why she didn’t do the last stair and said something that stuck with Lowe: “You need to hit every stair. You need to know you’ve done everything.”

That conversation helped form Lowe’s commitment to teamwork: being given helpful advice from someone who’d already been places she was looking to go. “Take the opportunity to collaborate,” she told attendees. “You might find that you’re the strength someone else needs.”

Lowe was a high school standout but noted that her entire high school track team received multiple scholarship offers. Such is the benefit of working together. Lowe went on to Georgia Tech—a revelation that brought applause from a roomful of engineering professionals.

Ultimately, Lowe did make it to the Olympics—four times, with the first three appearances closely coinciding with the birth of her children. “I’d have a baby, then go to the Olympics,” she joked. With each Olympic appearance, Lowe finished higher, ultimately landing in fourth place in the 2016 Games in Rio. But then, in 2016, she got her medal when three competitors in the 2008 Games were disqualified for doping. Lowe was elevated to bronze. Lowe showed a video of the ceremony in which she was awarded the medal, and said, “I already had three Olympic Gold medals,” referring to her young children.

Then in 2019, another shock: a rice-sized breast lump that turned out to be cancer. “My life passed in front of my eyes, seeing my children and husband living without me,” Lowe said. After a double mastectomy and chemotherapy, Lowe rang the bell signifying that she was cancer-free—and began a new chapter as a breast cancer THRIVER. “Sometimes things don’t happen on our timeline,” she said. “But life is worth fighting for.”