Lolo Jones is switching sports.
The track and field standout fell short at her last two attempts to win Olympic gold, with a stumble in 2008 at Beijing and a disappointing finish this summer in London, and decided that she doesn’t want to wait four years for her next attempt at a medal. So the hurdler decided that she will try her hand in the winter Olympics, NBC Sports reported.
Lolo Jones was one of three members of the U.S. women’s Olympic track team to be invited to Lake Placid, New York, to try out for the U.S. women’s bobsledding team. Along with Lolo, Hyleas Fountain and Tianna Madison were also invited.
The odds of Lolo Jones switching to bobsledding for good might not be great. Boblsed coach Todd Hays said the athletes were invited so they could “share their Olympics experiences with our athletes and to help boost team morale,” so it’s not clear if any had a real chance of making the team. To top it off, Lolo Jones finished seventh at the event with a time of 10.11 seconds, USA Today reported .
If Lolo Jones did somehow make the switch to bobsledding, it would give her a chance to erase some past heartache. In 2008 she was the favorite to win gold in the 100-meter hurdles, but hit the ninth hurdle as she was leading the race and ended up finishing seventh. In London, after getting much media attention, she failed to medal in finishing fourth.
The prospect of Lolo Jones switching to bobsledding is at least enough to take some attention off of her Twitter mishaps. She created buzz earlier this week when she unknowingly called out former Rutgers football player Eric LeGrand , who was paralyzed after a devastating spinal cord injury in 2010. LeGrand jokingly challenged her to a race, but Lolo Jones didn’t know who he was and responded, “Get checked for a concussion. Clearly, [you’ve] been hit in the head.”
