PARIS — Gabby Thomas streaked across the finish line, threw her hands to her head and hollered to the Paris heavens. It was the kind of roar that needed no soundtrack, which was good, considering the 80,000-plus teeming fans inside Stade de France made it impossible to hear anything through their sustained applause. But one look at Thomas’s face, her gold-medal winning face, and you could feel the emotion pouring forth.
Gabby Thomas becomes the first Team USA track athlete since Allyson Felix in 2012 to secure 200m gold! 🙌🇺🇸 #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/wAvBUnsXxI “You prepare for this moment, and you train so hard for this moment, but when it actually comes, it’s indescribable,” Thomas said after running away with the 200-meter gold medal, her time of 21.
83 beating silver medalist (and 100-meter gold medalist) Julien Alfred by 0.25 seconds. “I couldn’t believe it.
I never would have imagined in my wildest dreams that I would become an Olympic gold medalist, and I am one. I’m still kind of wrapping my head around that. It was the happiest moment of my life.
” It was like nothing she’d ever imagined. It was exactly as she’d imagined it. Advertisement Mission accomplished for Gabby Thomas with a GOLD medal in the 200m! #ParisOlympics pic.
twitter.com/O7wQjNquCi To watch Gabby Thomas run a sprint is to watch fluidity in motion. She moves with these long, purposeful strides, nary an extraneous movement allowed.
Every step is planned with precision. And on Tuesday night, every step was executed with perfection. As if scripted from the moment she returned from Tokyo three years ago with an individual bronze medal, a relay silver medal, and a wealth of invaluable experience, Thomas peaked at precisely the right time.
But to understand what got Gabby Thomas to the point of running a gold-medal-winning sprint was to watch determination in motion. This was no Hollywood script. As great as Tokyo was, the version of the Thomas who arrived in Japan was a wide-eyed Olympic newbie, one just happy to be there.
The one who emerged was a Team USA breakout star who suddenly faced a whole new track landscape — one in which she was the hunted not the hunter, one where every race she entered came with more attention, more pressure, more expectation. And then came injury, a hamstring problem that kept her from competing in the 2022 world championships. All these issues were tests to her resolve.
Advertisement But to really know the Gabby Thomas who somehow figured it all out is to understand that Gabby Thomas has made a career of figuring it all out. When her mother Jennifer Randall pushed her to stick with track back at Williston Northampton School — “She almost had to force me into it in high school, she knew I was fast.” — young Gabby had to find ways to make a sport she could barely tolerate more enjoyable.
“I set goals for myself, starting around my junior year, and I fell in love with achieving those goals and pushing myself and going after it,” Thomas said. “And track and field is a perfect sport for that, because it is a perfect equation of ‘you get out what you put in.’” “I found the beauty in it,” she said.
“I found the love in it. I just love chasing goals. I love chasing my dreams.
I love moments like this, where everything kind of comes together.” Thomas is an expert at stitching her life together from many angles. At Harvard, where she committed after high school, that meant making academics a priority.
But on her way to earning a degree in neurobiology, track pushed back in, and a stellar junior year allowed her to go pro. From there, it meant pushing those running goals to the top of the list, though not completely at the expense of continued studies. Leaving Boston for the University of Texas to pursue a master’s degree didn’t just put her among superior sprinting company, but at a renowned program in public health.
And from there, she discovered the calling that will eventually take over full time, though not until she aims for at least one more Olympics in Los Angeles 2028 (not to mention two more potential relay medals here in Paris). Thomas volunteers as the director of a hypertension program at Austin’s Volunteer Healthcare Clinic, working directly with a small group of 15-20 uninsured clients who are pre-diabetic and hypertensive, to help them manage and improve their health. Advertisement From arranging for sponsors to donate free running shoes, to assisting in acquiring healthy food options, the experience has led her to shift from wanting to become a hospital CEO to working in public health instead.
Who would bet against her? By the halfway mark of Tuesday night’s race, Thomas was already in control, even if she didn’t realize it. “I actually blacked out for the race,” she said, “but I knew what I wanted to do. My coach told me to go out and take the lead and finish strong.
“And it’s kind of like tunnel vision at that point. I got out of the blocks and I couldn’t tell you where anyone was. All I knew was I was focused on my own lane.
It was the kind of energy where nothing matters but the finish line. I wasn’t thinking about anything but getting to the finish line.” And so she did, first by a wide margin.
Hands that would later hold the edges of an American flag behind her back flew to the sides of head. And her mouth roared. “So many emotions all at once,” she said.
“I could not have anticipated what my reaction would have been. I was just so many emotions from me, just happiness, joy, pride, disbelief, shock, all at once. Advertisement “The happiest moment of my life.
” Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at tara.sullivan@globe.
com . Follow her @Globe_Tara ..
