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    Bobsledder Aja Evans on chasing Olympic gold: 'I refused to let anyone tell me I couldn't'

    by Dan Wiederer, Chicago Tribune Feb 06, 2018 5 minutes

    Of course Sequocoria Mallory remembers the call. That call. How could a mother forget? That distress in her daughter's voice. The apprehension. The plea for reassurance.

    Aja Evans' early ventures into bobsledding had gone so well. Until that moment in 2012 - when she actually had to jump in the back of a sled, duck her head and speed down the winding, icy track at the Olympic Sports Complex in Lake Placid, N.Y.

    For Evans, it felt like hopping into a trash can and rolling off the side of a cliff. The speed was breathtaking. The racket and the rumbling proved disorienting.

    "It's loud. It's bumpy. You're hitting stuff," Evans says. "It's like all your senses are heightened. So you go into defense mode. But then you know you have to stay relaxed.

    "It was so counterintuitive."

    Frightening too.

    So when Evans' sled finally came to a

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