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.
1. Allyson Felix is her inspiration.
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.
2. Thomas ran the fastest 200-meter time in the world this year.
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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3. She has a Harvard undergrad degree and a master’s in public health from the University of Texas.
Academics were always a priority for Thomas, who told NBC News she was inspired to succeed at the highest level by her single mother—who waitressed and took classes to become a professor while raising Thomas and her brother. Her hard work paid off with admission to Harvard University, where she studied neurobiology with a minor in global health and health policy and a citation in French. One of the classes she took, on disparities in the US health care system and how they impact people of color, would inspire her to pursue a master’s in public health at the University of Texas, which she completed in May 2023.
But college wasn’t all studying for Thomas—it’s also where her track career began in earnest. According to her official Olympics profile, she won a whopping 22 conference titles in six different track events while she was a student, and became the first NCAA sprint champion in Ivy League history with a winning time of 22.38 seconds in her now-signature 200-meter race. Thanks to her performance in that same event at the Paris Games, Thomas is the first Harvard grad to win an Olympic gold medal for track and field.
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4. She *really* prioritizes her sleep.
As part of her master’s program, Thomas wrote a paper on sleep epidemiology—how different populations sleep, and the barriers to good sleep faced by Black people, in particular. So you could say she’s super familiar with the importance of clocking quality shut-eye. “It is most definitely the most important part of my training, and I can’t stress that enough,” Thomas told AP News. She reportedly begins her sleep routine by 8 p.m. most nights, turning off all her digital devices.
5. Thomas volunteers at a clinic for people who don’t have insurance.
Further proof of her passion for health equity, Thomas also began volunteering at Volunteer Healthcare Clinic (VHC) when she was completing her graduate program, and has continued to support the free and charitable clinic while training for the Olympics. As she recently told Vogue, she is a director of the clinic’s hypertension-prevention program, helping monitor a group of prediabetic patients and ensuring they get the medications and support they need.
To others, it might seem like a burden to tack volunteer work onto an already busy training schedule, but Thomas told Olympics.com that she loves “having something completely different to focus on.” Not to mention, the opportunity to help others, which she says she is “so grateful to be doing.” She told NBC News that in the future, she’d like to run a hospital or nonprofit to expand access to health care.
6. She had a health scare before the Tokyo Olympics.
Shortly before Thomas headed to the Olympic Trials for the Tokyo Games in 2021, she got an MRI of her lower back in search of answers about hamstring pain. What the doctors found was a tumor on her liver—though it wasn’t clear if it was cancerous. While undergoing additional tests and awaiting more clarity, she continued to train, which she reportedly said was “crazy mentally.” The good news came just before she headed to Eugene, Oregon, for the Trials: It was benign.
As she told The Washington Post, she had made a promise to God during the period of uncertainty: “If I am healthy, I’m going to go out and win trials.” And that she did, with a nearly record-breaking time of 21.61 seconds, and her personal best until she shaved off a hundredth of a second for a 21.60 finish at the USA Championships in 2023.
7. Her boyfriend is cheering her on in Paris.
Thomas isn’t lacking when it comes to a support squad at the Games: Her S.O. Spencer McManes has been spotted in Paris in a “Team Gabby” shirt along with his sister and parents. According to Town & Country, the two have likely been dating since October 2022, and probably met in Austin, where Thomas has lived and trained during and after wrapping up her masters. (As for McManes? He was once a college athlete himself, playing on Yale’s football team.)
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8. She’s a proud dog mom to a pug named Rico.
In the “hobbies” section of Thomas’s Olympics profile, it just mentions Rico, which is honestly icon behavior. She told Women’s Running that she adopted the dog when she moved to Austin and didn’t have any people friends yet, and called him her “savior” during tough times in her grad program or on the track. Luckily for us, Rico has his own Instagram account. Unluckily for him, it doesn’t seem like he got to make the trip to Paris with her.
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