Background

Beginning her University of Tennessee career as a 100m-200m sprinter and long jumper, De’Hashia “DeeDee” Trotter didn’t commit herself to the 400 until the 2003 outdoor season. (Before that, she even explored playing basketball for Pat Summitt’s legendary basketball team.) Within months, though, she earned a spot on the USA team for the World Championships, and the 4x400m relay gold medal she won there nicely complemented the relay gold she won two weeks earlier at the Pan Am Games.

Within weeks of claiming the NCAA title in June 2004, DeeDee stormed from behind on the home straight at the Olympic Trials to put herself on the team for Athens. After the Trials, she decided to forgo her final year of NCAA eligibility and turn professional, and she ended 2004 ranked #4 in the world. At the Olympics, she ran the race of her life out of the tough lane one and finished fifth in the final.

In June 2007, DeeDee notched the most-exciting victory of her pro career when she upset Sanya Richards to be crowned the US Champion at 400 meters. It was the second time DeeDee bested Sanya in a major competition: in 2004, DeeDee defeated her for the NCAA title.

But DeeDee considers her third-place finish at the 2008 USA Olympic Trials the most difficult and gratifying race she has ever run. Less than two months earlier, her car door hit DeeDee on the left knee, chipping her femur and leaving bone fragments behind. After missing five weeks of training, she struggled to fight back, and with just weeks to go before the Trials she wasn't sure she would be able to compete at all. But she gutted her way through the adversity, ran a little faster in each round of the Trials and bravely battled to third place in the final to make her second Olympic team. "I didn't expect to be here," she said. "I feel blessed."

As if she isn't busy enough on the track, DeeDee has launched an initiative called "Test Me I'm Clean," designed to inspire, motivate and educate athletes of all ages and all sports about the dangers of performance-enhancing drugs. "The goal of 'Test Me I'm Clean' is for it to be more than a campaign," says DeeDee. "We want people to see it as a way of life."