Being an Olympian is just the first thing about Gabby Thomas, the 27-year-old star sprinter from Northampton, Massachusetts, who won a gold medal in the women’s 200-meter final at the Paris Games with a time of 21.83. In a press conference post-victory, she said, “I want to inspire the youth…to find their passions and be successful. I want young girls to look at us [medal winners] as strong female athletes and feel like they can do it, too.”
To say Thomas is a role model would be an understatement. She’s certainly racked up plenty of track accolades, taking home the bronze for the 200-meter and the silver for the 4×100-meter relay during her Olympic debut at the Tokyo Games in 2021, and running as part of the gold-medal-winning team for the 4×100-meter relay at the 2023 World Athletics Championships. (Indeed, she ran in the first round for that relay event at the Paris Games on Thursday, and the team—which also included Melissa Jefferson, Twanisha “TeeTee” Terry, and Sha’Carri Richardson—won their heat to advance to the final on Friday.)
But as Thomas told NBC News, she credits her success to “basically running track part-time,” and “having other things in my life that helped fulfill my goals and make me feel fulfilled.” Those aren’t just hobbies, either, but things like studying neurobiology at Harvard, getting a master’s degree in public health, and volunteering at a clinic. (Casual!)
Here’s everything you should know about the Team USA track phenom, whose pursuit for the gold is apparently a very intense side quest.
The most decorated female track and field Olympian is Thomas’s idol—whom she cites as the reason she started running track in the first place. (Thomas played sports like softball and soccer in grade school, but it didn’t occur to her to seriously pursue track until she saw Felix running in the US Olympic Trials for the Beijing Games, in 2008, on television at her grandmother’s house.) As she told Andscape: “I was always a fan watching her. I loved her grace and she’s so accomplished.” In a very sweet full-story moment, Thomas would go on to be Felix’s teammate on Team USA at the Tokyo Games. And she’s also now the first American woman since Felix to win Olympic gold in the 200-meter.
If there’s one thing to know about Gabby Thomas’s track career, it’s that she shines in the 200-meter—a half-lap sprint that basically requires all the speed of the 100-meter but with extra endurance and the technique needed to hold your pace around the track’s bend. Thomas put a stake in the ground for this event when she clocked a world-leading time—21.78 seconds, faster than anyone else this year—at the US Olympic Trials semifinals in June. That time was just shy of the world record for the event, 21.34 seconds, run by US sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner (a.k.a. “Flo-Jo”), in 1988.
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