Women of Wonder – 50 Years of Title IX: Allison Jones’ 8 Paralympics makes her all-time great
Allison Jones insists on staying humble.
"What a lot of people don't know about me is that I'm not competitive all the time," she said.
She has 8 Paralympic medals, two of which are gold.
"My medals are stored on the bookshelf, behind the bookshelves, actually," said Jones.
Despite her humility, there's no doubt that the former Palmer High School athlete has become one of the best Paralympians of all-time.
"As I grew older and grew into the position and became more adept at sports, I realized I was that person that people were looking at to see new things," said Jones.
Skiing by age 8, Jones made the national team at 16. While looking for a complimentary summer sport, that's when she found cycling:
"The world championships were held here in 1998 and I saw paralympic cyclists for the first time and just fell in love and said 'I'm doing that,' and the next year I was racing," she said.
Since falling in love with both skiing and cycling, Jones has competed in the Paralympics an astonishing eight times (2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016). She even attended D-U on scholarship for alpine skiing, earning a degree in engineering.
It's like she's had two careers.
"I'd call it three careers, to be honest," said Jones. "Because there was either school going on at the same time or engineering going on at the same time, so I was always juggling a lot."
And at London in 2012, Jones' gold medal in cycling made her just the second American woman to earn golds at both the summer and winter Paralympic Games.
"You just have to continue to follow your passion. No matter what obstacles are in front of you. No matter what others tell you, you can and can't do. Because it's really up to you who makes those determinations," said Jones.
"The whole point of doing anything that you love, is to have fun doing it. And it's always refreshing yourself to make sure you're having fun in whatever it is you're doing," she said.
Jones retired for four years. However, she just informed KRDO that she's back to training full time, moving back to Colorado Springs, and hopes to compete in the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris. She just finished competing at the 2022 world championships in Quebec.
This summer is the 50th anniversary of Title Nine. The law prohibited sex-based discrimination in schools, guaranteeing a level playing field for female athletics for the first time in our nation’s history.
To celebrate the anniversary, KRDO's Josh Helmuth is showcasing nine of the most remarkable female athletes to come out of southern Colorado.
