Gabby Thomas of the United States did not stay in the Olympic Village the night before racing in the 200m final – which she won on Tuesday at the Stade de France, placing both hands behind her head after crossing the finish line and At the same time, sort of scream and cry, a perfect emotion of victory reaction. Iinstead, she crashed in her boyfriend, Spencer McManes’, room in Paris, outside the confines of the athletes’ space.
“She needed air conditioning,” McManes said, moments after Thomas became the first American woman since Allyson Felix a dozen years ago to win the Olympic 200 meters.
Thomas woke up Tuesday morning, McManes said, with a lot of emotions. “It was so intense,” he said. “I wouldn’t say it was anxiety. It was more like excitement, heaviness. You feel the weight of it.” With her main rival, current 200m world champion Shericka Jackson of Jamaica, having withdrawn from the event, Thomas became the favourite.
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They discussed, analytically, how to deal with these feelings: It’s probably worth reminding fans here that Thomas graduated from Harvard, where he majored in neurobiology and global health. McManes played football at Yale. They decided to embrace the moment. Don’t deny it was a big deal. Recognize excitement and nervousness. This is all part of the program.
And they had to have breakfast in the same place they visited a few times in Paris. Thomas needed his favorite item: an omelet.
The approach worked wonders on Tuesday night when Thomas held off Olympic 100m champion Julien Alfred of Saint Lucia and crossed the finish line in 21.83 seconds. “I still don’t know what time I ran,” Thomas told reporters after the race. Someone informed her. “Okay,” she said. She only cared about winning.
His coach, Tonja Buford-Bailey, knew Thomas was on fire at 80m of the sprint. At that point, she raised her arms in the air. “What makes her special is that I love having an athlete who doesn’t take it too seriously and can stay calm,” Buford-Bailey says. “We were laughing in the warm-up area before.” They applauded like Americans Cole Hocker won surprise gold in the men’s 1,500 m. Shortly before being introduced on the track, Thomas turned 10 burpees. “I need to keep my heart rate up,” she said. “It’s really embarrassing, but it clearly works.”
Thomas swears she didn’t realize she had won the race until she crossed the line. “It’s the most bizarre feeling when you get into the flow and get into that kind of energy where nothing matters other than the finish line,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking about anything.” And where did the reaction come from – that it was supposed to become a living, breathing poster for the glory of the Olympics?
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“I didn’t expect to feel what I felt when I crossed that line,” Thomas said. “You prepare for this moment and you train so hard for this moment, when it actually arrives it’s indescribable, and I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I would never have imagined in my wildest dreams that I would become an Olympic gold medalist. And I am one, and I’m still thinking about it.”
Thomas very pointedly dismissed any suggestion that this victory was anything less than stellar and well-deserved due to Jackson’s absence. “I’ve been doing really well in the 200m all season,” she said. “So I wouldn’t say I was relieved when it was taken away. I wish her all the best. And it’s a shame you can’t have your current world champion competing. But I was confident before that and I was confident for the race.”
Some Olympic champions grew up passionate about the sport from a young age. Swedish Mondo Duplantis, for example, started pole vaulting in his backyard in Lafayette, Louisiana, when he was about 4 years old: he broke his own world record, for the ninth time, on Monday. Thomas was not one of those champions. “My mom really encouraged me, almost forced me to do it when I was in high school because she knew I was fast,” Thomas said. “I grew up playing other sports like football.” Why the aversion to suggestions from her mother, University of Michigan education professor Jennifer Randall, that she take up running? “Track isn’t exactly a fun activity in and of itself,” Thomas said. “You are literally running and it is difficult and painful.”
By her junior year of high school, however, she began to appreciate the goal-setting aspects of the sport. She runs this time, ends in this position. At Harvard, the demands of school and athletics made her consider dropping out. Thomas, who now has a master’s degree in public health, had ambitions beyond sports.
She still decided to turn pro after graduating from Harvard in 2019. Thomas moved to Austin to join a training group. She suffered more growing pains. “There are a lot of egos, there are a lot of moving parts, there are a lot of things going on,” she said. “I thought I would be cut out for this. I told my agent I was done. I wrote an email saying that I stopped running professionally and that I will pursue other endeavors in my life.”
She’s in a very different place now. The balance helped. She continued to pursue her passion for public health, volunteering, for example, seven to 10 hours a week for an Austin clinic that provides services to uninsured patients. This spring, she arranged for her sponsor, New Balance, to donate shoes to high blood pressure patients, who she and a team of volunteers help care for. The facility, the Voluntary Health Clinic, hosted a 200m viewing party on Tuesday. A group of 15 to 20 staff, doctors, volunteers and patients gathered to cheer her on.
“Gabby is very dedicated,” Marci Roe, executive director of the Volunteer Healthcare Clinic, told TIME in a post-race phone conversation. She calls Thomas a grade-A volunteer. She puts in the real work. She is not serving the clinic to show off her resume or gain public relations points. “She cares deeply about helping others,” Roe says. “She has a background in public health and wants to put it to good use.”
Thomas believes his involvement in advanced academic studies and other activities has helped maintain his focus on athletics. Now she has a chance to win two more gold medals at the Paris Games. She says she “hopes” to run both the 4×100 on Friday and the 4×400 on Saturday.
“I found beauty in it,” she said. “I found a love in it. I love pursuing goals. I love chasing my dreams. I love moments like this, where everything just kind of comes together.”
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
