“As I get into the blocks, I’m hyping myself up and thinking: ‘Let’s go, one shot, no second chances’. But once I’m on the line, it’s blank thoughts. I don’t want to hyper focus on anything. It’s just about reacting to the gun. The hay is in the barn. You’ve done all the training. It should be muscle memory at this point. Overthinking it will just tense your body up and slow you down.”
Gabby Thomas wants you to understand exactly how she feels seconds before an Olympic final. How adrenaline is flooding her body with the force of a burst dam, while her mind is trying to empty itself before the crack of the starter’s pistol. That internal conflict. Fight before flight.
“There’s a lot of energy in this moment,” she says. “It can be fear, nerves, anxiety, excitement, happiness, even frustration, all of that. But actually, there’s so much of a rush of adrenaline that I almost feel sedated, almost sleepy. Sometimes I’ll even be yawning on the line. But it’s not a bad thing. Then the gun goes off, and you black out.”
When it comes to explaining the science of speed – and applying the intensely theoretical to the blisteringly practical – there is no one sharper or smarter than Thomas. Not only is the 27-year-old favourite for 200m gold in Paris, and one of the quickest women in history, she also happens to have a degree in neurobiology from Harvard.
That much becomes clear as we sit down together to watch her extraordinary performance over 200m at last year’s US trials, frame by frame, step by step. For the first two thirds of the race, she is behind Sha’Carri Richardson, who has blasted out from the gun. But Thomas remains unperturbed. She continues to glide with the serenity of someone with plenty left in the tank – before, over the final 50 metres, dropping the payload.
As she crosses the line, the clock stops at 21.60sec making her the fourth fastest woman in history – behind only Florence Griffith-Joyner and two Jamaicans, Shericka Jackson and Elaine Thompson-Herah. Yet as Thomas talks through her performance, the most striking thing is how she picks up on tiny clues she believes can make her even faster. Her body angle. The way her feet strike the ground. And particularly her drive phase before hitting the bend.
“I am very type A and into analysing how I run,” she says. “I’ll talk to my coach about it over and over again. She tells me to try not to get wrapped up into it all the time. Because when you’re overthinking you do start to run slow. But the drive phase, in particular, is something we practise over and over again, meticulously. It’s very, very technical but it sets you up for the entire race.
“If I can get that part even stronger, I will be really, really hard to beat. When you look at Flo-Jo’s 200m world record her second 100m is insane, astronomical in fact. So that’s what you really want to do: your first 100m is setting you up to have an unreal second one.”
So could that Flo-Jo world record finally be broken after 36 years at the Paris Olympics? Especially given the lightning-fast track at the Stade de France and advances in super spike technology? Thomas nods.
“I think it’s in reach for Shericka,” he says. “I think it’s in reach for me at the Olympics, if the conditions are right. The super-fast tracks are now incredible, and my sponsors New Balance have put a lot of development into our spikes. You really feel like you’re getting a lot back from the track.”
Before then, though, Thomas has a final prep race in the London Diamond League this Saturday. It is a stacked field, which includes Britain’s Dina Asher-Smith and Daryll Neita as well as the brilliant young St Lucian, Julien Alfred. But after running 21.78sec this year – far quicker than anyone else in the field – Thomas will expect to win again.
She also knows there will be millions more eyeballs on her now, especially in Paris, since becoming one of the stars of the new six-part Netflix track and field series, Sprint. Tellingly it not only captured her successes on the track – including a 4x100m relay gold and 200m silver medal behind Jackson at last year’s world championships in Budapest – but the egos, frenemies, and intensity off it.
“When I first came on to the scene after college, I was a little bit shocked by how catty, divided and dramatic a lot of the environment could be,” she says. “But it’s also a competition, so I understand that. I’d say a third of people grew up running together, or are in a training group, so they’re friends. A third of people really don’t like each other, and that’s just the nature of sports. And then a third just mind their own business and go their own way.”
But Thomas’s life has never been solely defined by track and field. Last summer she added a master’s degree in public health from the University of Texas to her résumé and she spends her free time volunteering at a clinic in Austin that provides healthcare to those who don’t have health insurance.
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“It’s important for me to show by example,” she says. “I love representing myself as an African American woman and I want to show young people that they can be who they want to be. That you can go to Harvard. That you can win an Olympic medal.”
But she also wants them to know her journey wasn’t easy. And how the drive and values instilled into her by her mother, Jennifer Randall, who raised her as a single-parent, have helped her thrive.
“She’s a go-getter,” says Thomas. “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,” she adds. “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. Because I just didn’t feel like I did.
“And while that was a little bit challenging growing up, I really do think it helped propel me forward in every aspect of my life,” she adds. “Having to prove myself at Harvard academically made me fight more in other social spaces, but especially on the track.”
One day Thomas says she might return to academia to do a PhD, which would please her mother, who has become one of the leading scholars in the field of psychometrics. But for now she is putting her mind to work in other ways as she prepares for Paris.
“Visualisation is huge for me,” she says. “Part of my warm-up routine in every race is just visualising success. But I also do it the night before. I’m seeing everything. I’m imagining who is lined up against me, everything from start to finish, and even how I’m going to celebrate at the end. Essentially, if you think about it enough and the mind starts believing it’s true, then the body does as well. The mind is really powerful. It’s insane how you can trick your brain into doing things and how your body follows.”
With Jackson struggling for form in 2024, Thomas has assumed the mantle of favourite for Olympic gold. And if all goes to plan on 6 August, the date of the 200m final, her mind and body will arrive at the start line in perfect equilibrium. Just as they did at those 2023 US trials when she knew she had won before the gun propelled her body forward.
“I remember thinking: there’s a lot of pressure going on at these trials. But sometimes you just know when you’re ready. You just know when you’re going to win. And I just knew. So I wasn’t even nervous. And when you get to that point as an athlete, it’s just the best feeling. That’s what you train all year for. To be in the zone, to feel prepared and ready. And I was.”