Age: 23
Occupation: Track athlete
Hometown: Liberty, South Carolina
Tall, world-class, former LSU hurdler. No, not her. But Jasmin Stowers does train with Lolo Jones and would love in the next couple of Olympiads to match her friend’s level of accomplishment.
“She’s really competitive and a good athlete, so that makes me better,” Stowers says.
Stowers left LSU as a seven-time All-American and fastest hurdler in school history. Last year, she finished third in the NCAA indoor championships in the 60-meter hurdles and followed that with a second-place in the outdoors 100, losing by just two one-hundredths of a second.
“But when I run I don’t remember anything,” she says. “Except the end of the race.”
Stowers carried that success into this year, winning the 2015 U.S. national title in the 60, hopefully setting her up for a big outdoor season. In the Olympics, by the way, hurdlers run 100 meters outdoors.
Throughout her career she’s continually had time drops.
“I want to get better. I’ve learned a lot from college to now,” says Stowers, who was born in Germany because her father was in the military.
She has her degree in dietetics with an eye on post-graduate work, but that’s on hold for now. She was recently sponsored by Nike, and her job each day is to train—although she does hold a part-time job to help make ends meet.
By the time you read this, she will already be in the full swing of the outdoor season, running not only at LSU, but in Jamaica, in various meets around the U.S. and Europe, and, assuming she qualifies, the world championships in China. And she might as well be gone from Louisiana in the springtime: She admits to not liking crawfish or shrimp.
Like Jones, Stowers is coached by LSU head coach Dennis Shaver. Her best 100 time is 12.71 seconds. She hopes to hit 12.5 this year and realizes she might need to hit 12.4 to make the 2016 Olympics in Brazil.
“A lot of people doubted me as an athlete,” Stowers says. “I want to keep cutting my times and make the world team to show I can make the Olympic team.”
That doesn’t surprise Shaver.
“The development that took place while she was in college was impressive,” Shaver says. “But the effort that she has put forth since then really reminds me of the progress that Lolo made.”
