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Injury ends Donahue woman’s ‘Gladiator’ chances

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By Kay Luna | Monday, January 7, 2008 10:56 PM CST | () comments

She was running on Astroturf when she says a woman “took a cheap shot,” and tackled her.

Then, pop.

A warm sensation started trickling through Jessie Adams Foster’s leg.

At first, her injured knee didn’t hurt, says the 26-year-old Donahue, Iowa, woman, who was competing on the new version of the television show, “American Gladiators,” which premiered Sunday on NBC.

“When I tried to get back up and run, my leg just flopped out from under me,” she said. “I didn’t think it was that bad. I wanted to go back out.”

So started, and ended, Foster’s short run on the game show, a remake of the 1980s-’90s athletic competition series, which pitted everyday people against “Gladiators.”

The show’s marketing materials characterized her as a single mother of three — ages 7, 3 and almost 2 — and a “toilet paper saleswoman.”

Foster worked as a customer service representative for Great Western Supply Co. in Davenport for about a year until quitting in November, but spent most of the past few years co-owning a Bettendorf gymnasium with Pat Miletich, the nationally acclaimed mixed martial arts fighter and trainer from the Quad-Cities, and Collin Carney, her former boss at the paper company.

This was the first time she had tried out for a TV show, but says she took “a huge risk” — and even left her job — to participate in the show’s tapings, which started in late November in Los Angeles. Her motivation: The chance to win $100,000.

Foster tried out for the show in Chicago over the summer and was chosen among about 20,000 other people who tried out in eight cities and on video. The 1999 Pleasant Valley High School graduate said that, by contract, she was not allowed to discuss how she faired in the competition, even though she was seriously injured more than a month ago, on Nov. 30.

She has been wearing a brace, walking on her bad leg, ever since — even though she “pretty much destroyed her knee,” she said. She is scheduled for knee surgery later this month.

The rest of the series will air at 7 p.m. Mondays.

“It was an incredible experience,” she said, despite the injury. “They want me to go back for season two, so if they’ll have me back, then I will.”

Kay Luna can be contacted at (563) 383-2323 or kluna@qctimes.com.