"I can feel the wind go by when I run. It feels good. It feels fast"
About this Quote
Speed, in Evelyn Ashford's telling, isn't a statistic or a medal count; it's a sensation you can almost touch. "I can feel the wind go by when I run" turns elite sprinting into something vividly physical and oddly intimate: the world doesn't just blur, it brushes past you. The line is simple on purpose. Sprinters live in hundredths of a second, and Ashford's language mirrors that economy - no metaphors to get in the way of the body doing what it knows.
The repetition in "It feels good. It feels fast" is doing more than emphasis. It's a small act of refusal against the way track stars, especially Black women in Ashford's era, were often packaged as machines: disciplined, efficient, and emotionally mute. Ashford reclaims the experience as pleasure, not just performance. "Good" comes before "fast", suggesting the real payoff isn't dominance, it's freedom - the rare moment when training, talent, and nerves click into pure motion.
Context matters here. Ashford's career bridged multiple Olympic cycles and different phases of women's sports visibility, from being under-covered to being over-scrutinized. In that landscape, a statement this direct reads like a grounding technique: stay with what you can feel, not what people project onto you. It's also a quiet corrective to the myth that greatness is grim. Sometimes excellence is just the clean, addictive thrill of moving through air like you own it.
The repetition in "It feels good. It feels fast" is doing more than emphasis. It's a small act of refusal against the way track stars, especially Black women in Ashford's era, were often packaged as machines: disciplined, efficient, and emotionally mute. Ashford reclaims the experience as pleasure, not just performance. "Good" comes before "fast", suggesting the real payoff isn't dominance, it's freedom - the rare moment when training, talent, and nerves click into pure motion.
Context matters here. Ashford's career bridged multiple Olympic cycles and different phases of women's sports visibility, from being under-covered to being over-scrutinized. In that landscape, a statement this direct reads like a grounding technique: stay with what you can feel, not what people project onto you. It's also a quiet corrective to the myth that greatness is grim. Sometimes excellence is just the clean, addictive thrill of moving through air like you own it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Sports |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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