Helen Stephens (1918-1994) was only a teenager when she became an track star, winning two gold medals in the 1936 Olympic Games. She set world, Olympic, American, and Canadian records in running, broad jump, and discus. Stephens later became the first female owner of a women's semiprofessional basketball team.

Stephens was born on February 3, 1918 in Fulton, Missouri. She grew up on a 115-acre farm, the daughter of Frank E. Stephens and Bertie Mae Stephens. She was tall, slender and seemed born to run. As a child, she routinely raced boys on a mile-long run home from the schoolhouse, winning every time. Her cousin rode a horse and Stephens would trot along with them. "There were a couple of ditches on the way to school," Richard D. Mandell quotes her as saying in his 1971 book, The Nazi Olympics, "and the horse and I would take them together." Because she grew...