Watching her mother struggle to string her life together while bringing up two kids, Gabby Thomas understood the value of hard work. She had seen her mother go from waitressing, as she pursued her PhD, to landing a job as a professor at the University of Michigan. This work ethic left a mark on Thomas, who for years struggled with the imposter syndrome, despite being an Olympian.

Thomas had a steady curve of success, progressing from silver and bronze medals at the Tokyo Olympics to a gold-laden outing in Paris. This success was built on a relentless pursuit of excellence and overcoming self-doubt on a number of occasions. When she triumphed in the 200m sprint at the Paris Olympics, Thomas revealed how the thought of quitting ran through her mind many times when she started her career.

“Running track in college, there were many times where I thought I would quit. 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,” Thomas told reporters. Having grudgingly taken up running at the insistence of her mother, Thomas even dropped an email for her agents, telling them that she was “done running professionally.” However, she persevered and now stands as a world-renowned athlete and all this was achieved after toiling behind the scenes.

Gabby Thomas recently had a standout moment in Vogue, in a story published on Wednesday. She opened up about her journey to success, discussing the hard work and sacrifices that have shaped her path. “There’s so much truth in what we do,” emphasizing that there are no shortcuts: “On the track, I can’t cheat four years of hard work and commitment—otherwise I wouldn’t be there.” She went on to mention that every Olympic-caliber athlete has spent countless hours behind the scenes mastering their craft.

“You show up every day, and you work. And win or lose, the emotions that come—you can’t fake that, either,” she said, and who knows it better than Gabby Thomas.

At the Paris Olympics, Gabby Thomas was in a league of her own as she touched the tape in 21.83 seconds for the 200m gold medal. She broke down in tears with teammate McKenzie Long, who finished seventh in the race, quickly coming to console her. After winning the race, she talked about how she was overcome with emotions as she crossed the finish line.

“I was not prepared for how I was gonna feel when I crossed the line. Just happiness, joy, pride, disbelief, shock all at once,” she said. She didn’t stop there, taking the 4x100m and 4x400m relays, which gave her three gold medals. But struggles? Immense!

In 2021, while preparing for the U.S. Olympic Trials, she experienced hamstring pain and she decided to get an MRI of her lower back. To her utter shock, the doctors found a tumor on her liver.

“The more I started talking to doctors, the more they started saying the word ‘cancer,’” she recalled. Despite her Olympic dreams in jeopardy, Thomas continued to train while undergoing more tests and awaiting clarity.

Thankfully, just before the Trials in Eugene, Oregon, the reports revealed that the tumor was benign and she was cleared to compete. After being under stress for so long, she secured her spot for Tokyo with a stunning time of 21.61 seconds. Thomas had once again overcome a daunting challenge, just like her early days on the track.

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Gabby never thought she was one of the best athletes out there when she was young. She was not famous, nor was she the most popular athlete.“I was not a highly recruited high school athlete, and I was not the favorite in the NCAA,” she said in 2024. Over the years of her NCAA career, Gabby was always in a situation where she had to compete against other athletes who were deemed to be better than her. “I was not the favorite in the NCAA,” she said.Instead of putting her off, Gabby began to work even more rigorously. She did not allow the people’s doubts to bring her down. She continued working hard. “I was the first one to the track, the last one to leave,” she shared. “Every rep, every moment of training mattered to me. And I treated it like it was a big deal.”

She won two gold medals at the World Athletics Relays in Nassau in May 2024. She also won the 4×100 m relay gold and a silver in the 200 m race at the World Champions in Budapest in 2023.  Apart from excelling on the track since her teenage life, Thomas has been combining education and sport. She studied neurobiology and global health at Harvard for her undergrad degree and then attended the University of Texas for her master’s in epidemiology.

Throughout her journey, her resilience has been her defining quality, for which she has often credited her mother. Last year talking on the “Why Not Me? With Mike Mike Jackson,” Thomas said the sacrifices of her mother, Jennifer Randall, were ingrained in her and motivated her to take up life’s challenges.

After earning a high school diploma, Jennifer worked her way through college in Georgia, but her priorities changed when she became a single mother. According to Thomas, Jennifer would bring both her children to class, with childcare being an issue, while attending graduate school. She was eventually accepted into a PhD program at Emory University.

“We had to sit in class with her; we watched her, I’m going to grind; that was my normal because that’s what I saw growing up—I saw a single mom doing that with twins,” Thomas recalled on the podcast.

Not only Thomas overcame physical challenges to prove her doubters wrong, but she also battled past her own lack of confidence even after becoming an Olympian.

Gabby Thomas’s battle with imposter syndrome behind the medals

Remember that in 2021, we saw the rise of Gabby Thomas, but did you know she was struggling with imposter syndrome? Despite her success in the US Olympic Trials, where she qualified for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic team, Gabby was dogged by the conviction that she was never meant to be there. After moving to Austin from Boston to train with Olympians for the Tokyo Olympics, Gabby Thomas felt she didn’t belong.

“When I moved here, I was not an Olympian. I wasn’t even close to an Olympian. Nobody was talking about me making the Olympic team. So when I moved down here and told people, ‘I’m training for the Olympics’, I felt like an imposter,” she told Sky Sports in an exclusive interview. Gabby stated that she carried the feeling even after clinching a bronze medal in the 200m and silver in the 4X100m relay in the Games.

“When I came back from Tokyo Olympics with a bronze medal and a silver, I was very happy with that. I would have been happy ending my career there. It’s really all the outward talk and chatter that you hear that makes you want that gold medal. You’re like, Dang, well I really got to go get that!” she said. Her imposter syndrome extended to her education as well.

Studying neurobiology and global health at Harvard, Gabby often overheard herself thinking she was not cool enough in the presence of some of the smartest students in the world. “I didn’t belong there,” she admitted. But instead of going away, she persevered, pushing through until she felt she deserved to be in that space.

But she never relented and continued working hard to get herself to the rank of an Olympic medalist. So, when it comes down to it, Gabby knows that success doesn’t come handed to you on a silver platter—it’s all about putting in the work, and she’s proven she can weather any storm to get where she wants to be.