Pain, tragedy, and war couldn’t keep sprinter Thelma Davies from the Paris Olympics

Thelma Davies is already a winner.

Where the Girard College graduate finishes at the Olympics in Paris will be less of a defining moment and more like the next chapter in a harrowing, inspirational tale that began years ago inside a Liberian refugee camp in Ghana.

If there is a Davies documentary years from now, however, surviving civil war in Liberia would only scratch the surface.

To properly spin her yarn, one also must include the village that shaped her, the tribulations that tested her, and the resilience that helped the All-American at Louisiana State University fulfill her dream of becoming an Olympic sprinter representing Liberia.

“It’s always been something I’ve thought about …,” said Davies, 24, in a recent phone interview. “When I got older and thought about my future, it just made more sense … representing [Liberia], where my family is from, letting them see my talent, and letting people see that my mom and dad came to the U.S. and I made something of it. It’s just a beautiful thing to be a part of.”

For about 14 years spanning the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, Liberia was ravaged by two civil wars.

The West African nation — according to the Office of the Historian within the United States Department of State — was founded in 1847 in an attempt “to deal with the ‘problem’ of the growing number of free [Black Americans] by resettling them in Africa.”

Generations later, Liberia’s first civil war raged from 1989 to 1997. The second lasted from 1997 to 2003. According to the Center for Justice and Accountability, an estimated 150,000 to 250,000 men, women, and children were killed in both conflicts.

The warfare, according to Reuters, frequently included rape and mutilation, “often by armies of drugged child soldiers led by ruthless warlords.”

Davies’ parents, Eliza and Emmanuel, met in a Liberian refugee camp in Ghana. Both fled around 1998.

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“The war is not something to explain,” Eliza said via phone.

“It brings back bad memories,” Emmanuel added quickly.

“It was a whole lot of hurt that went on,” Eliza continued. “A lot of people died. You lost family. You lost friends. It’s just so hard to talk about because it was such a difficult experience for all Liberians, I would say.”

After her parents’ friendship blossomed into love, Davies was born in the refugee camp.

Her trademark speed, Eliza joked years ago, was evident even during labor.

“With Thelma,” she told The Inquirer in 2018, “I was not in labor at all. Before I even yelled, she was [out].”

Davies was about 9 months old when her father left for the United States in search of a better life. He eventually settled in Minnesota before sending for his wife and daughter about two years later.

After about five years, the family moved to Philadelphia, where they raised their three children.

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Emmanuel had played high school basketball in Liberia and Eliza played kickball, but they were more focused on academics, which is why, Davies said, they sent her to Girard College. That’s where, in sixth grade, she met Rick Leek, the now-late track coach who first noticed her talent.

In 2018, Leek’s wife, Cindy, told The Inquirer that her husband came home one day and said Davies was going to be “a shining star.”

Leek certainly had an eye for talent.

Years earlier he convinced a young kid from West Philly that he also had potential.

Diamond Woolford listened.

Woolford, a 1999 graduate of Girard College, excelled in the long jump, triple jump, and the 100- and 200-meter sprints, finishing as one of the school’s top track athletes before competing at Penn State.

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Fatefully, Leek, before he suffered a heart attack and died in 2014, told Woolford — who had just become a volunteer assistant in Happy Valley — about Davies’ potential.

“When he passed away,” said Davies, a 2019 graduate at Girard, “I just vowed to continue running for him.”

After Leek’s death, Woolford took over the track program at Girard, where he helped Davies dominate, becoming the first track athlete to win four consecutive PIAA titles in two events, the 100 and 200 meters.

“Continuing the work that Mr. Leek started with [Thelma] is a great honor,” Woolford said. “I owe that man everything. To this day I always appreciate what he did for me.”

Even after Davies went to LSU, she and Woolford still talked at least three times a week. Injuries ensured that she needed the support.

Davies arrived in Baton Rouge already familiar with adversity.

During her junior year at Girard, she had taken ibuprofen for minor soreness before a rash flared overnight, leaving painful, itchy bumps all over her body.

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She struggled to sleep, put on clothes, and stop herself from scratching.

About a month later, a dermatologist diagnosed her with erythema multiforme, which, according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders, is a hypersensitivity disorder affecting mostly children and young adults, often leaving patchy lesions on the arms and legs.

The dark spots that covered Davies’ body left her feeling “devastated” and self-conscious about wearing a track uniform that left much of her skin exposed.

With her focus and spirit waning, Davies said it sometimes felt like she was “running in slow motion.”

But with support from Woolford, her family, friends, classmates, and the local track community, she eventually embraced her struggle.

When a little boy at Girard asked what happened to her skin, she joked that she had been bitten by a “cheetah,” which quickly became her nickname.

Adversity struck again at LSU.

First, COVID-19 scuttled the end of her successful freshman campaign in which she likely would have qualified for NCAA nationals, a major accomplishment a year removed from high school.

A left hamstring injury plagued the following season. It was the first time that Davies had been physically unable to compete.

“That was definitely depressing because I had never experienced [injury] before,” she said. “It was definitely a new experience that I wasn’t ready for.”

Support from a sports psychologist, teammates, training staff, coaches, friends, and family eventually helped her through challenging rehabilitation. So when she suffered a stress reaction in her left foot the following season, her first thought was, “Not again!”

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Davies still competed, wearing a protective boot before and after races, but wasn’t herself.

A right quad injury then stifled her junior year.

“It was definitely frustrating to see people you compete against doing amazing things and you know you should be right there in the mix,” Davies said, “so I just had to tell myself, ‘It’s going to be OK. I’m going to come back from this.’”

Before her senior season, in which she was named team captain, Davies talked with LSU track coach Dennis Shaver, who encouraged her to do everything she could to stay healthy. So, Davies strictly monitored her diet, sleep and rest habits, and hydration levels.

It helped, she said, that her major was kinesiology. Her injury-free senior season is even more impressive considering that she also served on a student-athlete advocacy committee, a Black student-athlete organization, and the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

Davies twice earned All-American honors during her senior season, tying the LSU mark shared by Sha’Carri Richardson in the 200 meters, and twice joining the exclusive sub-11 club in the 100 meters.

“I guess I’ve learned how resilient and persistent I can be if I really want something,” said Davies, whose plan post-Olympics is to turn professional.

What Davies wants now is a berth in the Olympic finals in the 100 and 200, though her parents and siblings (Anna and Emmanuel Jr.) won’t be in attendance.

Woolford also cannot attend. Davies also hopes to compete in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, where she says travel plans should be easier.

For now, Davies will do what she’s done for so long: run for those who can’t be there.

Her grandmother, Anna Johnson, from whom Davies says she gets most of her resilience, had cancer and died without ever seeing her granddaughter compete.

Though Davies’ life has so often been touched by death, heartache, and pain, her spirit — not just her speed — seems to inspire those in her orbit.

“That’s what I want people to see in her,” Eliza said. “I want people to know that she has been through a lot. She’s been pushing and encouraging herself through high school, through college, for her dream to come true. … I’m so proud that she’s my daughter.”

“She’s been my rock,” said Davies’ father, who is still recovering from a stroke that required a month-long hospital stay. “She’s inspired me.”

Eliza has called what her daughter does on the track “a gift from God.”

To hear Davies tell it, though, her parents’ dedication is what helped her dream become a reality.

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“My parents didn’t have to put us in Girard, but they knew that was the best education we could get for where we were,” she said. “And that put me in position to meet [Woolford] and [Leek] and go to college on a scholarship. They did it to give me the best opportunity for the dreams that I would later have.”

“I’m definitely grateful for them,” she added later. “[They were] immigrants and made a life for themselves and their children in all the best ways possible.”

A “beautiful thing to be a part of,” indeed.