Whether it is excelling as an Ivy League student or vying for success on the running track, Gabby Thomas says she has always been driven by a ferocious underdog spirit.
The 27-year-old American sprinter blazed to victory in the 200m at the Paris Olympics on Tuesday, the crowning achievement of a sprinting career that Thomas says was forged by her upbringing.
Raised by a single parent, Jennifer Randall, who herself rose from poverty to become a professor of psychometrics, Thomas says her mother set the template for her academic and athletic success.
“She’s a go-getter,” Thomas told The Guardian in a recent interview.
“She grew up in true poverty in Mobile, Alabama. But she went after it. And she just showed me through her actions, what it was like to do the same.
“We were low income and African American. But my mum was trying to set us up to be successful, which meant we were in predominantly white spaces, going to good schools on scholarship.
“That put that underdog mentality in me where I felt like I needed to prove that I belonged in every space that I was in…
“Having to prove myself at Harvard academically made me fight more in other social spaces, but especially on the track.”
After Harvard, Thomas moved to Texas to chase her dream of one day running in an Olympics, a goal she had set for herself after watching US track icon Allyson Felix race as a child.
But again though, Thomas admits she had pangs of “imposter syndrome” when training with elite athletes at Austin.
“When I moved (to Texas), I was not an Olympian. I wasn’t even close to an Olympian. Nobody was talking about me making the Olympic team,” she said in an interview before the Paris Games.
“And now I am an Olympian, an Olympic medallist … but I wasn’t always. And I had to force myself to be in that space.”
Thomas burst onto the scene in 2021, scorching to victory at the US trials in 21.61sec which at the time made her the second-fastest woman in history over 200m behind only Florence Griffith-Joyner.
After taking bronze at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics, Thomas set her sights on gold in Paris which she collected with a blistering performance on Tuesday.
Away from track and field, Thomas likes to decompress by volunteering at a healthcare clinic that offers medical services to uninsured patients.
“When I volunteer at the health care clinic, it’s just a release of a lot of the stress and pressures from the track,” she says.
“And then a lot of times when I’m at the clinic, I’m thinking, ‘Well, I can’t wait to get back to the track.’ So it’s give-and-take. But I think it’s just really healthy.”
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