Olympian Tara Davis-Woodhall Is Still Flying High—While Embracing Her Inner Homebody

That moment with Hunter—a lot of people asked, “How did you know where he was?” But we talked throughout the entire competition. I had six jumps, and that was the last jump. When I finished, I took a moment. I fell back into the sand, and I was like, “What the heck?” I heard the crowd cheering and yelling, and I just took it in for a second. When I got back up, I sprinted to him, and he called me an Olympic champ. And that moment was just so surreal.

Throughout your Olympic journey, you had such an upbeat, positive attitude. And then you had this amazing win. Has there been any kind of mental come-down since then? How do you feel currently?

I definitely had an Olympic hangover, as they say, but it also wasn’t really a full one because I never had downtime. I feel like the people who have the real hangovers—it’s like, they’re doing something, they’re doing something, and then they stop. But we’ve been continuously on the go since.

The real question is like, What’s next? What am I shooting for? My whole life goal was the Olympic gold, so it’s like, How do I dream more? What more do I want from this sport? And I’ve realized what I definitely want is the world record. I can say now, I figured that out. Mentally, I’m ready for the season to begin, and I’m ready to train. But yeah, for a second, I had this moment of, What am I supposed to do?

You just mentioned that you didn’t have any post-Olympics downtime. I imagine some of that is from you getting thrust into the spotlight. Was that something you expected? How has all that attention felt?

It definitely was not expected. Even with Adam, my agent, we would talk about the Olympics, and we’d talk about winning, but I’d always be like, “if I win.” I wouldn’t say, “when I win.”

Now, it’s unbelievable that we’re in the rooms that we are in, but it’s kinda cool that our sport is being seen, and that’s what I’ve always wanted to do is change how people see the sport. And being in these rooms and saying hi to these people—now they’re maybe going to watch my Instagram, and then watch long jump, and then watch US Olympic Trials and Nationals. That’s the part that I’m excited for.

https://www.self.com/story/tara-davis-woodhall-off-season, GO TO SAUBIO DIGITAL FOR MORE ANSWERS AND INFORMATION ON ANY TOPIC