Marion Jones

From the beginning this much was clear: Jones was a natural. By age five she was trouncing her older brother … at every game they played in their desert neighborhood of Palmdale, Calif. By eight she was winning the 100-yard dash and the 400 meter in youth track meets and leading her teams—T-ball, baseball and soccer—to victory. "I knew very early on that I was a bit different," Jones says. Her mother saw it too, and she devoted herself to helping Marion's talent find its niche. "Anything I had interest in my mom said, 'Well, let's join it. If you don't like it, we'll move on.'" In 1984, when the Olympic Games came to L.A. and Evelyn Ashford won the 100 meter and the 4×100 meter, Jones set her first big goal: to win Olympic gold.

Source: Reifer, Susan. Sports Illustrated Women, September 1, 2002, p. 90.