By Lori Ewing
PARIS (Reuters) – Olympic 200 metres champion Gabby Thomas wanted to walk away from athletics on several occasions, she said on Tuesday following her dominant victory in Paris.
The 27-year-old American, who captured bronze at the 2020 Tokyo Games and silver at last year’s world championships, secured her first global title after beating 100 metres champion Julien Alfred and compatriot Brittany Brown to win gold.
“Running track in college, there were many times where I thought I would quit,” Thomas told reporters. “When I went pro, growing pains of joining a professional training group are real, there are a lot of egos, I didn’t think that I was going to be cut out for it.
“I told my agents ‘I’m out and I’m done’. I wrote am email, I said ‘I’m done running professionally, I’m going to go pursue other endeavours with my life’.
Thomas said she initially took up running grudgingly at the encouragement of her mother Jennifer Randall, who saw how fast she was on the soccer field.
Thomas ran for Harvard while completing a degree in neurobiology before earning a Master’s in public health from the University of Texas.
She adopted a pug named Rico, saying the dog helped her through trying times when running was not going well.
“In every race that I ran, there were a lot of eyeballs on me,” she said. “There were a lot of expectations. And that was definitely a lot more pressure. And I had to adapt.
“That’s what all of the best athletes do. That’s what all of the greats do. You’re forced to adapt when you’re faced with a new challenge.”
Thomas was still not entirely prepared for the ear-splitting screams of a jam-packed Stade de France.
“I envisioned this race over and over from start to finish,” she said. “I was not prepared for how I was going to feel when I crossed the line as an Olympic champion.
“There’s no way to really prepare yourself for that. Tokyo Olympics was a lot of fun and it was great for me to experience that before coming here. But there is nothing like walking into a stadium of 80,000 people and they’re screaming and they’re right on top of you.
“That is a lot of pressure to put on someone and a lot of pressure for us to kind of deal with.”
It was the first time since 1976 that there was no Jamaican on the podium in the Olympic women’s 200 metres.
(Reporting by Lori Ewing, additional reporting by Helen Reid, editing by Ed Osmond)
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