Seba Johnson

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Seba Johnson Alpine skiing
Seba Johnson (2016)
nation American Virgin IslandsAmerican Virgin Islands American Virgin Islands
birthday 1st May 1973 (age 47)
place of birth Frederiksted ,  United States
size 164 cm
Weight 54 kg
job Educator, actress
Career
discipline Downhill , super-G ,
giant slalom , slalom
Trainer Suzy Johnson (mother)
status resigned
End of career 1992
 

Seba Johnson (born May 1, 1973 in Frederiksted , Saint Croix ) is an American animal rights activist , actress and former ski racer from the Virgin Islands . In 1988 she was the first black woman to take part in Olympic ski races and still holds the record as the youngest female ski racer in Olympic history.

biography

Childhood and youth

Seba Johnson started elite sport in Heavenly Valley .

Seba Johnson was born in 1973 to a Tutsi from Burundi and an American from Maine in Frederiksted on the island of Saint Croix . Her parents had met in Africa, where mother Suzy did community service. On the run from the burgeoning civil war in Ethiopia , the couple ended up in the Caribbean . When Seba was three years old, the parents separated and the father went back to Burundi, where he died of diabetes in 2002 .

Through her mother's work as an artist, Seba came into contact with traveling at an early age. During a winter holiday in St. Moritz , she got on skis for the first time at the age of five and wanted to become a ski racer. At seven, Seba moved with her mother and to cerebral palsy diseased Mexican half-sister Zuely to Kittery, Maine. She began skiing regularly in the White Mountains with her grandmother, a distant relative of the British royal family . After elementary school, the family moved again and settled in Stateline , Nevada , after Suzy Johnson saw a photo of the mountains around Lake Tahoe . While her mother worked in the casino to finance her daughter's sporting ambitions, the junior skier trained with the Heavenly Valley Ski Team.

Sports career

The young athlete was looked after from the start by her mother, who, due to lack of funds, acted as a trainer, physiotherapist, psychologist, chef and washer-dryer. Due to her stubbornly committed nature, Suzy Johnson often clashed with the coaches of other nations and the FIS . This sparked media comparisons with the Austrian Marc Girardelli , who started for Luxembourg , whose father and supervisor was also considered a stimulus. Paul Major, head coach of the US women's team showed understanding for Suzy Johnson and the role of coaching parents in top-class sport:

“It's important to have demanding parents that constant support. Look at figure skating and gymnastics moms - they have the thumbscrews on coaches and kids all the time. Overbearing parents aren't such negative - they can be powerful motivating force. "

“It's important to have demanding parents who are always supportive. Look at figure skating and gymnastics mothers - they always have the thumbscrews on coaches and children. Bossy parents are not all negative - they can be a powerful motivating force. "

- Paul Major (1990)

1988 Winter Olympics

The US Virgin Islands made their winter game debut in 1988.

Seba Johnson qualified for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada . Together with seven bobsleigh pilots and the luge rider Anne Abernathy , she represented the US Virgin Islands as the first female athlete at the Winter Olympics. After leading the nine-man squad onto the Olympic stage as the flag bearer, she took part in the Super-G on February 22nd . This made her the first black woman to compete in Olympic ski races and remained the only one until Kenyan Sabrina Simader started 30 years later in Pyeongchang . At 14 years and 297 days, she was also the youngest female participant in this sport and, after August Wolfinger from Liechtenstein , the second youngest ski racer in Olympic history. In the race she fell on the third goal, but got up again, stomped back and finished the run. The race ended with a disqualification , but it made it a crowd favorite. In the giant slalom two days later, she finished just under 43 seconds behind Olympic champion Vreni Schneider in 28th and penultimate place, which is still the best result for a black skier at a major event.

Johnson's record-breaking Olympic debut earned her a lot of media interest, especially in the USA. For example, she had television appearances on Good Morning America and on NBC . ESPN dedicated a special program to the young athlete. She also made it onto the cover of the Swiss weekly magazine L'illustré .

World Cup and World Cup participation

In the following winters, Seba Johnson increasingly took part in races of the Alpine Ski World Cup, but never reached the top 15, which was decisive for winning points. In December 1988, she competed in her first downhill run in the Nor-Am Cup . In 1989 she started in Vail at her first world championship in Super-G and giant slalom and at 15 years and 283 days again set an age record - this time also across genders. At the end of the season she did not get beyond the ranks 32 and 36 in giant slalom and downhill at the Junior World Championships in Alaska , which meant last place in the ranking.

Johnson attracted a lot of attention on November 24, 1989 at the Park City World Cup Giant Slalom . Ten minutes before she was due to leave the start house, she was banned from the race for refusing to wear a team sponsor's racing suit. The FIS officials justified the disqualification with a violation of a contract with the clothing company CB Sports, the new supplier of the international ski federation. Suzy Johnson, on the other hand, claimed the Virgin Islands team had not signed any sponsorship deals and instead found racism against their daughter as a reason for exclusion. Seba Johnson later stated that she did not want to wear the suit because of a sewn-in piece of leather . That is not compatible with their ethical veganism : "I don't think a dead cow's skin has any place on a ski mountain". In January 1991, she started at the World Championships in Saalbach-Hinterglemm , where she competed again in Super-G and giant slalom.

During the summer months Johnson trained on Mount Hood , in Portillo and on the Hintertux Glacier and joined the teams from Austria , Switzerland and Italy several times . She received financial help from the National Brotherhood of Skiers, founded in 1973, an organization that supports African-American athletes in preparing for international competitions. One of the goals is to establish a black athlete in the US ski team - an ambition that Seba Johnson also claimed for herself. The US coaches were very impressed by Johnson and thought she was a great competitor, but believed that she needed a tougher training plan.

Olympic Winter Games 1992 and end of career

At the beginning of February 1992 Johnson was ranked 1334 in the FIS world rankings in giant slalom . Before her second Olympic Games in 1992 in Albertville , she said that she was less interested in the results and more interested in setting an example for the youth of her country of origin. At the Games in the French Alps , Johnson competed in giant slalom and slalom and finished 37th in each case. In the giant slalom, she lost almost 48 seconds to Olympic champion Pernilla Wiberg , but was able to leave seven runners behind in the ranking. In the slalom, she was a good 37 seconds short of Petra Kronberger's best time , which made her faster than five of her competitors.

The return to the university brought her an unpleasant surprise in the form of a racist threatening letter. As early as February 1988 when she was attending the Olympics for the first time, Johnson had received death threats from people who, according to their statements, viewed skiing as a “white man's sport” and a black woman as breaking a taboo . After the mother had tried for the longest time to shield her daughter against attacks of this kind, the persistent hostility eventually led her to end her active career at the age of just 19.

activism

With the 1994 Olympic waiver , Johnson protested against minke whale hunting in Norway.

Seba and her sister were raised vegan by their mother . At a young age, the ethically motivated vegan Suzy Johnson took her daughters to demonstrations against zoo and circus animal husbandry. The Olympian recalled a protest against an annual pigeon shooting in Pennsylvania , to which she came with a self-made sign saying "Let Birds Fly - Not Die". In addition, her mother is said to have bought live lobsters in supermarkets several times and released them in the nearby Atlantic .

After finishing her skiing career, Johnson hit the headlines again in 1994 when she waived the Olympic Winter Games in Lillehammer despite being eligible to start . Although she had already ended her active career, she cited Norway's rejection of the whaling moratorium and the resulting high quota of minke whales as the reason for the boycott. She later gave a speech on Burundian television about the situation of hippos on a busy road on Lake Tanganyika .

When asked about her vegan diet as a top athlete, Seba Johnson blames precisely this lifestyle for her physical well-being. In interviews she repeatedly emphasizes that she has lived without animal products of any kind since she was born. In 2002, she declared that, despite not using dairy products, she had never broken a bone in numerous falls: "I've never tasted a glass of milk and I've never broken a bone". After a serious skiing accident in March 2008, in which she suffered a triple pelvic fracture , she felt strengthened in her opinion by the short healing time of only three months. As an ethical vegan and African American, Johnson has already drawn comparisons between livestock husbandry and slavery and is vehemently against speciesism .

In addition, Seba Johnson is committed to human rights and addresses social problems such as the increasing drug crime in lectures on the Virgin Islands . While she tried in vain to participate in the National Olympic Committee of the US Virgin Islands, in 2014 she expressed her solidarity with the LGBT community and spoke out publicly against Russia's handling of homosexuality and the Winter Olympics in Sochi . She also criticized the award of the 2020 Summer Games to the whaling nation Japan and appealed to the IOC to put pressure on it.

Education and acting career

After first attending high school in Nevada and completing a semester abroad in Germany , Seba Johnson graduated from Kittery. While she was still skiing, she began to study art on a sports scholarship at the University of Maine in Farmington, which she eventually graduated from Howard University in Washington, DC . Today she lives in Los Angeles and works as a special education assistant.

Johnson gained her first experience in front of the camera in the course of her skiing career when she was shooting commercials for sponsors in Austria. In 2005 she had her first acting appearances on TV in Slave Catchers, Slave Resistors and the miniseries Empire Falls - Fate of a City . In 2008 she was hired as a stand-in and photo double for Jada Pinkett Smith in the film The Women - From big and small affairs . She is a member of the Screen Actors Guild .

Seba Johnson is working on an autobiography .

reception

Thanks to her historic Olympic records, Seba Johnson is still well known in alpine skiing. Already at the age of 18 she gave lectures in the Virgin Islands and tried to bring skiing closer to children without them having an idea of snow . She also told the media that she did not want to be seen as "exotic":

“I want to be recognized as a normal racer. It makes me kind of wish I was racing for a country with snow (...) They can't imagine what snow is like, so I had to tell them it was like going to your icebox and feeling the inside of the door (...) I never realized I was all that black before I got to the Olympics and everybody made such a big deal about it. People looked at me and said I should be windsurfing or something. "

“I want to be perceived as a normal racer. Somehow I wish I would go for a country with snow (...) They can't imagine what snow is like, so I had to tell them it was like going to the freezer and feeling the inside of the door (...) Me never realized how black I was before I came to the Olympics and everyone made such a big deal out of it. People looked at me and said I should go windsurfing or something. "

- Seba Sohnson (1992)

Since autumn 2016, she has been immortalized in the newly opened National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC alongside sports icons such as Jesse Owens . The most important exhibit is Johnson's Olympic equipment from Calgary, consisting of two pairs of skis, a helmet, ski boots, sticks and a racing suit. In addition, her mother made over 100 other objects available, primarily lists of results.

successes

Olympic games

World championships

Junior World Championships

Filmography

  • 2005: Slave Catchers, Slave Resistors (TV movie)
  • 2005: Empire Falls (TV miniseries, uncredited )
  • 2006: Waterfront (TV series, not aired)
  • 2008: 21 (uncredited)
  • 2008: The Women (Stand-in for Jada Pinkett Smith )
  • 2017: Kansas St.
  • 2017: The Age of Beasts (Documentary)

Web links

Commons : Seba Johnson  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Seba Johnson - SAG. Screen Actors Guild , accessed March 7, 2018 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Noel K. Gallagher: A former Mainer completes her winding run to the Smithsonian. Portland Press Herald, September 24, 2016, accessed March 9, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Breaking Barriers. US Virgin Islands Skier Seba Johnson Races Against the Odds. In: Ski Magazine , February 1990 issue, pp. 15-16. Google (English).
  4. ↑ a b c d Michael Janofsky: OLYMPICS; Virgin Islander Has Shot at 5 Olympics. The New York Times , November 10, 1991, accessed March 8, 2018 .
  5. ^ A b c Seba Johnson: Taking the Lessons My Mother Taught Me to the African-American Community. Satya, October 2002, accessed March 8, 2018 .
  6. ^ A b Rollo Romig: The Lonely Mission of India's Sole Luger. The New York Times , February 9, 2018, accessed March 8, 2018 .
  7. ↑ a b c d e f Seba Johnson. Viva La Vegan !, August 2013, accessed on March 8, 2018 .
  8. ↑ 1998-1968 teams. Virgin Islands Olympic Committee, March 8, 1998, accessed March 8, 2018 .
  9. ^ Virgin Islands Skier, 14, On Future Olympic Stage. In: Jet. The Weekly Negro News Magazine , March 14, 1988 issue, p. 46. Google .
  10. ↑ a b Seba Johnson. Sports Reference LLC, accessed March 8, 2018 .
  11. ↑ Billy Kidd : This Racer's a Johnson. In: Skiing Magazine , March 1989 issue, p. 36 Google .
  12. ↑ a b Seba Johnson is setting records at the 1989 World ... United Press International , February 10, 1989, accessed on March 8, 2018 .
  13. ^ Athlete: Seba Johnson - Results. FIS , accessed on March 11, 2018 .
  14. ↑ 'Racists' Deny skis a run. In: The Canberra Times , November 26, 1989 issue, p. 11. Online .
  15. ^ A b Brian Early: Seba Johnson to be featured in the African American museum. Seacoastonline.com, September 22, 2016, accessed March 9, 2018 .
  16. ↑ a b Michael Wilbon: In Skis, One Size Fits All. The Washington Post , February 5, 1992, accessed March 8, 2018 .
  17. ↑ a b Lorena Elke: Interview with Seba Johnson. The Ghosts in Our Machine, accessed March 9, 2018 .
  18. ↑ a b c Kezia Jauron: Vegan Olympian Seba Johnson Speaks Out Against Sochi. The Thinking Vegan, February 22, 2014, accessed March 9, 2018 .
  19. ^ Seba Johnson - Museum exhibits. Smithsonian Institute , accessed March 14, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Johnson, Seba
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American ski racer
DATE OF BIRTH May 1st 1973
PLACE OF BIRTH Frederiksted , US Virgin Islands