Yudu Gray is a former Watkins Mill High School sprinter headed to the summer Olympics in Beijing with the Liberian track team.
Watkins Mill grad is running for homeOlympic moment dedicated to the African nation he was forced to leaveYudu Gray Jr. was 6 years old when he and his parents packed a single bag and left their home in Liberia, on Africa’s West coast. They took no valuables, no family keepsakes; just what they needed to wait out what they were certain was a short-lived coup attempt.
‘‘Basically like going on vacation,” Gray said. ‘‘We’ve been on vacation for 19 years.”
Gray spent his childhood in London, Paris and various ports of call in the United States, but never considered renouncing his Liberian citizenship. In August, the 2000 Watkins Mill graduate, now 25, will represent Liberia at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China.
Gray will run on his nation’s 4x400-meter relay team, and expects to qualify for the 200- and 400-meter individual races in July.
The family was forced from its home in the 1989 uprising against the government of Samuel Kanyon Doe. Yudu Gray Sr. was Minister of Public Works — equivalent, Gray said, to the American Secretary of Transportation — in Doe’s government.
Yudu Sr. recently returned Liberia at the head of a construction company, aiding the rebuilding effort. Gray’s mother, Jestina, still lives in the area with his two American-born siblings. Brother Tahweh is a student at Montgomery College; sister Elizabeth, a junior at Northwest High School.
The political situation in Liberia has stabilized since the 2005 democratic election of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. For 16 years prior, the country was ravaged by civil war.
A leader of the 1989 uprising, Charles Taylor, was president of a divided Liberia from 1997-2003. Taylor is currently on trial in The Hague, Netherlands, charged with war crimes and human rights violations.
Given the history of his own homeland, Gray has faced questions about competing in China, which according to the Human Rights Watch 2008 World Report, ‘‘continues to deny or restrict its citizens’ fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom of religion.” Gray set up a Web site and began blogging to help answer some of those questions.
‘‘Rather than shut it down or boycott it, I think athletes who are against the policies, myself or anyone else, have an opportunity on TV or the Internet to say, ‘I’m here, but this is what I stand for,’” Gray said. ‘‘Rather than looking at it in a negative light, you can make it a positive.”
Gray has experience with silver linings. He met his fiancée, Ronni, during his one ill-fated year at the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore, where he aggravated an old hamstring injury trying to make the track team.
The original injury occurred in the first meet of his senior year at Watkins Mill, where he also played football. The injury derailed what could have been a breakout season for the late-blooming Gray, who said it cost him an athletic scholarship.
‘‘His passion for track was extraordinary,” said his high school coach, Lannie Seymour. ‘‘He was not only a good high school athlete but a quality person. It is very pleasing to know that he has matured physically and will display his talents on the world stage.”
Gray transferred from UMES to Montgomery College and took more than a year away from track, time he now says helped him mentally. In 2002, he made a comeback at Bellevue (Wash.) Community College, where he was approached about running for Liberia in the 2004 Olympics. The opportunity never materialized due to continuing unrest in the country.
Gray did travel to Africa in 2004, however, to a refugee camp in Ghana housing displaced Liberians. By chance, he met a man who had worked for his father, and got a message he has carried with him ever since.
‘‘I’m looking at the living arrangements, and he lived in probably a 10x10 room with seven other people,” Gray said. ‘‘No running water, no electricity, no health care. ... The only thing he told me was, ‘Don’t forget about us. You’re here now. A lot of people come and visit. But when they go back to America, they forget about us.’”
Gray will carry that memory with him to Beijing, as a member of the first official Liberian Olympic delegation since 1988. Twelve track athletes banded together and qualified for the games in 1996 and 2000; in 2004, just two — hurdler Sultan Tucker and sprinter Gladys Thompson — made the trip to Athens, Greene, under the Liberian flag.
This year, the team has the backing and support of the Sirleaf government. The other athletes are, like Gray, based in the U.S. Their coach, Garfield Ellenwood, is an American married to a former Liberian runner, Joycelyn Harris.
At the moment, Gray is training full-time. He does strength work in the morning and runs in the afternoon on Watkins Mill’s track. After his workout, he’s a volunteer coach at his former school. One of his charges, Deron VonBallmoos, won the 3A West Region title in the 100 meters. VonBallmoos is also Liberian.
In his little spare time, Gray takes online classes through the University of Phoenix, and plans to graduate next year. He saved for three years so he could quit working and still pay for rent, insurance and food while training full-time to fulfill his Olympic dream.
That dream will come true in August. Part of the dream is Yudu Gray’s. Part belongs to those who survived that refugee camp in Ghana.
‘‘I’ve been wanting to run in the Olympics since I was 8,” Gray said. ‘‘So part of it is as an athlete, I want to compete against the best. The other part is, how proud are they going to be when they, who’ve had very nearly nothing for the last 15 years, can say ‘That’s our country. He’s running for our country.’”
For more
To read Yudu Gray’s Olympics blog and learn how you can contribute to his training effort, visit www.yudugray.com.
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