To win medals and then to be the first African-American, all of those things piled on each other was certainly something that strengthened my sense o… - Bonnie St. John

You need a good strategy in addition to an audacious goal. For me as an athlete it was getting more days on the snow and getting access to really good coaches. I had to move from San Diego, had to raise money and over the Summer I had to live on a glacier to train. I think one of the reasons I won was that I had learned to organize myself better than my competitors in taking the initiative to advance myself, hire coaches, figure out how I was going to make it all happen. It was great training for becoming an entrepreneur—you have to wear all of the hats. You have to recruit people, train them, and organize yourself and your team to make something great happen.

I had to be an entrepreneur to raise the money, to hire trainers, to travel to where I could train and to create my own opportunities to be able to be a ski racer. There was no farm system to find one-legged black skiers in San Diego, California,

It's great to learn that at an early age, that what happens to you doesn't have to - you know it can make you feel a certain way but then you have the power to turn that around, she says. And some adults have never learned that, right?