Cheryl Toussaint was on edge waiting for the baton in the early heats of the 4×400 meter relay at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. She and her teammates were trying to qualify for the finals. They seemed like a lock until the “shoe issue.” “I was the third leg of the relay as I am waiting for the incoming runner to hand the baton to me,” recalled Toussaint, now the 72-year-old meet director of the upcoming 49th Colgate Women’s Games. “There was a collision. A runner who was on the outside of me fell and dropped the baton. “I’m looking backward because my runner is coming in. I need to make sure that I get that stick. As I am getting ready to take my first few steps, a runner from another team crashes into me and steps on the heel on my right foot causing my spike shoe to come off. “This is not going to stay on. So, I run a few more steps. Now several other girls pass. Only four teams qualify to get to the finals and we’re now in fourth or fifth place and I’m like, ‘Oh my God!'” Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News; Courtesy Cheryl ToussaintCheryl Toussaint won a silver medal (inset) at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News; Courtesy Cheryl Toussaint) Toussaint did what every hard-nosed former Bedford-Stuyvesant native would do. She kicked off the shoe and ran the whole race with only one shoe. “I was thinking about how silly must I look at the Olympic Games running with one shoe on, but I was also thinking this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I was just running for dear life,” Toussaint said. She bared down, passed two runners and the team moved on to the finals where she and her teammates — Mable Fergerson, Madeline Manning and Kathy Hammond — captured the silver. That is a lifetime worth of sporting memories right there, but the NYU grad continues to make more as she oversees the Colgate Women’s Games with the finals on Saturday, Feb. 1. The finals used to be held at Madison Square Garden but have found a nice niche at the Nike Armory in Washington Heights, which is also the home of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame and adjacent to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Munich is just the beginning for the Erasmus High School grad and a member of the Atoms Track Club also based in Brooklyn. Both the Atoms and the Colgate Games were the brainchild of Toussaint’s predecessor, the late Fred Thompson. The former lawyer and assistant New York State attorney general, Thompson’s vision is 49 years old, and it continues with Toussaint at the helm and the entire veteran staff. “Fred provided an opportunity for me and the folks of the Colgate Women’s Games to extend what had been done for us to others,” Toussaint, who’s been involved in the Games for the entire 49-year run, said. “Most people want to return the favor, pay it forward. The staff, they’ve been involved with this program for well over 25 years.” Thompson died in 2019, and Toussaint has been the meet director since 2015. Her vision is the same as Thompson’s, to give young girls and women a chance to succeed in sports, but more importantly earn scholarships for school. “I was struggling with basics like mathematics and even reading,” Toussaint, a Teaneck, N.J., resident, said. “There was a point when I joined the [Atoms] track team, I started to understand that this track team wasn’t about just running track. “You really needed to bring in the grades and put forth the same kind of effort if not more than what you brought to the track in your schoolwork. “ Thompson was an athletic task master “He took a look at [your] grades. If you’re not doing well, you gotta stay home,” Toussaint, who started running before the birth of the Games as a 12-year-old in borrowed sneakers, said. She also captured a gold medal in the 4×400 at the 1971 Pan Am Games in Colombia. “I realized if I wanted to stay on this team, I was going to have to cut the mustard. I was going to have to actually bring those grades up.” She got them up so much so that she graduated from NYU with a major in math. “That had a lot to do with my experience from running just like figuring out everything is mathematical,” she said. Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily NewsOlympic medalist Cheryl Toussaint, Meet Director of the Colgate Women’s Games, is pictured at the indoor track field inside the Fort Washington Avenue Armory in Washington Heights on Jan. 19. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News) This year’s Games are returning to normal as this is the first indoor meet since 2020. Two thousand athletes signed up for the Games and over 1,000 competed. “In 2020, we ended our indoor series and then the pandemic hit,” she explained. “We didn’t have an [2021] event. In 2022, we opted to do an outdoor event because the pandemic was still lingering and Colgate wanted to be very conservative and safe in terms of exposure. “We did the outdoor season again in 2023 in the spring. We had to wait until the winter came around for 2024 to return indoors because we are known traditionally as an indoor development series and east coast athletes need this event. “We start from elementary school, first graders through college and beyond,” she said. And there is a payoff for the women. “In 2022, the scholarship amounts doubled to $2,000 for first place, 1,000 for second and 500 for third,” she said, “and that’s for every single event and there are 37 events.” “You have women who are experienced veterans, and you have girls who’ve never run at all,” added Toussaint. “The older ones are encouraging and inspiring the younger ones because they know what it’s like and the younger ones are looking up to the older ones because they want to be there one day.” “[Young] girls are learning how to compete, how to lead, how to step out and away from their parents and to stand on their own and manage.” Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily NewsAn athlete competes in the high jump at the Armory on Fort Washington Avenue in Manhattan on Jan. 19. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News) Track and field has left lasting memories for Toussaint because of her silver and gold medals, but the tragedy of the massacre of the Israeli athletes at the ’72 Olympics is vivid to this day. “When the terrorists attacked, I was literally in the [Olympic] Village where they were,” she recalled after all these years. “I did see something that looked like athletes being shuffled out of the village. They were shackled. That was probably them. “The Israeli athletes were being taken from the Village, were in suits, sweat suits as were the terrorists. I kept wondering what I was seeing.” Getting back to her room was difficult because the security was now tighter. Her coach came to her rescue. “Fred Thompson was working for ABC with Jim McKay,” she noted as the hostages were taken before her heat. “He said, ‘You’ve got to get into the Village.’ We had ID and they let us in.” Getty; Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily NewsOlympic medalist Cheryl Toussaint runs at a competition in Toronto in 1973 (left). (Getty; Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News) She stayed up hoping to get more information and the last thing she remembered was the athletes were heading to the airport and the local German police had sharpshooters there so nothing would go wrong. It did. “We woke up the next morning and I just heard crying and screaming,” she remembered. “Crying because the athletes were killed.” Maybe that’s why Toussaint likes the peace of watching old movies and solitude to relax. “I just go out and walk to get into my own space by myself and enjoy nature,” she said. While the Colgate Games are a seasonal event, it is a joyful full-time job for Toussaint because of what it means to the participants. “Once they come into the environment and see such positivity, the girls understand that there’s an emphasis with the Games on education by way of the scholarships,” she said with pride in her voice. “They realize, wait a minute, there’s something more to this. It really does help girls to actually strive to realize their own potential.” Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily NewsCheryl Toussaint, Meet Director of the Colgate Women’s Games, poses for a photo with young competitors at the Armory in Washington Heights on Jan. 19. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News) Toussaint’s potential continues in overdrive for next year’s 50th running of the Games immediately after the 49th edition is a wrap. “As soon as I finish on February 1st,” she said with a chuckle, “I’m already planning for that.” Fred Thompson would be proud. The 49th Colgate Women’s Games is a free event. To reserve tickets, go to the website Eventbrite. Meet results will be posted on https://armortrack.live/