The first Black woman to win a gold medal in wrestling for the U.S. is using her prize money to invest in her mom’s food truck business.
After making history at the Tokyo Olympics, Houston native Tamyra Mensah-Stock shared her plans to use the $37,500 she received to buy a food truck for her mother, ABC 7 Chicago
reports.“I wanted to give my mom $30,000 to get a food truck. It’s her dream,” she said. “I told her five years ago, ‘I’ll get you your food truck, but you gotta be responsible.’ She’s like ‘Thank you, baby’…so my mom’s getting her food truck!”
Her mom will now be the owner of a food truck she plans to call “The Lady Bug.” Mensah-Stock also gave her mom’s future business a shoutout adding how good her food tastes.
“She’s gonna have her little cooking business. She can cook really, really, really well—barbecue,” she added. “I don’t eat it ‘cause I’m a pescatarian now.”
Mensah-Stock’s victory made her only the second American woman to ever win Olympic gold in wrestling after beating Nigeria’s Blessing Oborududu 4-1, Chron reports.
The pro athlete grew up in Katy, Texas, wrestling at Morton Ranch High School, where she was a star player, having
won two state championships. Her success in wrestling didn’t come without her own personal struggles. Mensah-Stock almost walked away from the sport after losing her father in a car crash while he was driving home from one of her wrestling tournaments in 2009.“My mom, my aunt, my twin sister, my little sister, my
grandma and my little cousins are all in Florida now watching at 6 a.m. cheering me on, and my husband woke up really early to watch me,” Mensah-Scott told NBC Sports. “It means the world knowing they’re watching and that’s all the support I needed.”This is as sweet as it gets.