Olympic gold medalist, Sanya Richards-Ross, stirred up social media after she revealed in her new memoir, Chasing Grace, that she had an abortion weeks before competing in the 2008 games.
In an interview with Us Weekly on Friday, June 9, at Marina Del Rey Hotel in California, Ross, 32, shared that she has “gotten over 30 messages” of support from women on various social platforms, who shared their stories with her.
“People are like, ‘I’ve never told anyone.’ And they’re telling a complete stranger, so you know, I feel like I’m doing exactly what I was hoping the book would do and it’s been wonderful,” The Jamaican-Born athlete said.
When deciding whether to share this particular story in her book, the track and filed star, who won the gold for the U.S. in 2008 explained, “I wanted to share it because I think a lot of women just sweep it under the rug. You just keep moving, keep pushing. And I bawled … I prayed and cried over that for months, but it was so cathartic [to write about it.]
She continued, “Even for my husband and I, because there was something there in our relationship too because we just acted like it never happened.”
As far as the other topics she covers in her new book, Ross told Us, “It’s a lot of personal stories, so every single one of them I felt like I had to be very thoughtful about it and be fair also. I wanted to tell my truth and be fair to the people who I wrote about in the book, so that’s why I felt like it took so much work, because it was like, I wanted to be delicate to that balance, but I would say the abortion was the number-one toughest one, of course, to share.”
Chasing Grace: What the Quarter Mile Has Taught Me About God and Life is out now.
