Lolo Jones is not backing down after a harrowing experience with Team USA.
In February 2025, Jones climbed into a team-issued bobsled at the Olympic training complex in Lake Placid, New York. The U.S. team was testing equipment before the World Championships. The sled accelerated down the ice at speeds approaching 90 mph.
At the bottom of the track, Jones knew something was wrong.
Her lower back burned. She could not bend over. She had lost control of her bladder.
"I’ve never had that happen to me ever in (my) life," Jones said. "I immediately went up to the athletic trainer and told him what was happening."
Jones was no inexperienced athlete struggling to read her body. She competed at the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics as a hurdler and the 2014 Winter Olympics as a bobsled brakewoman. She had won world championships in both sports.
She understood pain. This felt different.
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A trainer arranged a treatment for her, but Jones says the head of sports medicine at the Lake Placid training center canceled it because she had already received treatment that week.
Jones arrived for the appointment without knowing it had been canceled.
She was hurt, frightened and days away from the biggest race of the season.
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Then Jones received notice that officials had revoked her access to sports medicine, she says, and a broader ban later kept her out of the Olympic training facility, including its rehabilitation areas, weight room, housing and push track.
The notice said her behavior violated the facility’s code of conduct, she says, but Jones claims officials never identified the specific rule she broke or gave her a formal hearing before imposing the punishment.
According to reporting by the Southern California News Group, Jones and other people familiar with the case said USOPC officials later acknowledged that the approved treatment should not have been canceled. Jones apologized during a meeting before the World Championships.
The restrictions remained.
"I voiced my frustration that athletes should have medical access," Jones said. "It just continued to escalate."
The symptoms Jones described demanded more than a routine massage.
Severe back pain combined with bladder dysfunction can signal compression of the nerves at the base of the spinal cord.
The American Association of Neurological Surgeons lists urinary incontinence, leg weakness and severe lower-back pain among the warning signs of cauda equina syndrome, a medical emergency that can cause permanent paralysis or loss of bladder control.
Jones says no one at the center examined her, ordered imaging or explained the possible severity of her injury.
Without a diagnosis, she made the decision elite athletes often make. She kept going.
Jones obtained pain medication from her doctor in Louisiana and returned to the sled for the World Championships in Lake Placid. She completed four runs with pilot Elana Meyers Taylor. They finished sixth.
"If someone would’ve told me, ‘Your spinal fluid is leaking out of your back. If that pilot hits a wall, you will be paralyzed,’ there is no way I would’ve gotten back in that bobsled," Jones said.
After the championships, Jones paid for her own MRI. She says the imaging revealed a herniated disc, another disc bulge, several lumbar tears and a cerebrospinal-fluid leak. She later underwent spinal surgery.
She also paid for rehabilitation, travel and private medical help while she remained barred from the training center. She estimates the injury and its aftermath cost her about $100,000.
For Jones, the cost exposes a larger imbalance inside Olympic sports.
Many bobsled athletes survive on modest stipends while absorbing significant training and travel expenses. Jones had income from work outside the sport, but she says the bills still devastated her finances.
"I make good money, but I’m not making Michael Phelps money," she said.
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Jones now argues that Olympic athletes need stronger due-process protections and an affordable way to challenge the institutions that control their medical care, funding and competitive futures. She says the current grievance system costs too much and gives athletes little realistic power against governing bodies.
The experience has also changed how she views the Olympics themselves.
Jones once imagined that a future daughter might follow her into elite sports. She no longer sees that possibility as a dream.
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"I will not let my daughter be an Olympic athlete," she said. "She will not be treated like this."
For more than 20 years, Jones pushed her body for Team USA. She raced through injuries, changed sports and represented the country in both the Summer and Winter Games.
When her body finally forced her to ask for help, she says the system treated her pain as a disciplinary problem.
"I’ve given so much to Team USA and represented this country as best I can," Jones said. "And when I needed Team USA back, they absolutely abandoned me."