When Tonja Buford-Bailey, ’95 C&I, started her University of Illinois track career in 1990, her goals were modest: Score points for her team and earn an elementary education degree. “I wasn’t even thinking world-class,” Buford-Bailey says. “I wasn’t even thinking about doing anything after college. It was never even a consideration.”

Coach Gary Winckler had other ideas for the Dayton, Ohio, native. He was thinking big, really big. Olympic big. In an event Buford-Bailey didn’t like. “He really forced the 400-meter hurdles on me,” she says. “I didn’t want to run the event. I thought I was going to be a 100-meter hurdler.” Turns out the coach knew what he was doing. Buford-Bailey didn’t qualify for one Olympic team; she made three. 

“I had never gone anywhere cool,” she says She was about to. Buford-Bailey earned her first Olympic spot while still competing at Illinois. Buford-Bailey won the 400 hurdles at the 1992 NCAA Outdoor Championships, earning one of her 10 All-American honors.

She won a staggering 25 Big Ten titles while running for the Orange and Blue. She was an easy choice to be honored as part of the inaugural class for the Athletics Hall of Fame in 2017.

Winckler entered Buford-Bailey in the 1992 Olympic Trials at New Orleans. She finished second to earn her spot in Barcelona.

But the best Olympics for Buford-Bailey were closer to home. At the 1996 Atlanta Games, she won the bronze medal in her specialty. She keeps the medal at home, along with others she has earned over the years, both as a coach and as an athlete. Buford-Bailey finished second in the 1995 World Championships, just .01 second behind the winner.

Buford-Bailey is thankful she attended Illinois. “It was everything,” she says. “It was the best decision other than marrying my husband [NFL receiver Victor Bailey] that I ever could have come up with.”

After her competing days ended, Buford-Bailey started coaching. She spent close to two decades in the college ranks, including 10 seasons at her Alma Mater.

In 2018, Buford-Bailey left her position at the University of Texas and started her own track club in Austin. She is training a group of 11 professional sprinters and hurdlers, pushing toward the upcoming Summer Olympics in Paris.

Tonja and Victor have two children. Son Victor Jr. plays professional basketball in Germany, and daughter Victoria lives and works as a nail tech in Austin.

This article appears in the summer 2024 edition of the University of Illinois Alumni Association magazine.