Katie Nolan

She had three did-not-finishes, DNFs, last Olympics, 2022.

Yeah.

She was like, the one going in, all the commercials were about Michaela Schifrin.

All the commercials were like, Michaela Schifrin goes for gold.

We saw her win gold when she was like 18 or something, really early in her Olympic career.

She didn't finish three of her races last Olympics.

People were like, what's going on with Michaela Schifrin?

A number of different things that just went wrong.

She was just...

Right.

2020, she lost her dad, who was like her, you know, he was at all of her races.

She was trying to deal with grief, learning that it's not linear.

It kind of hits you when it hits you.

And then this Olympics...

She won, and she won by a margin of victory that's so big that if you added up the margin of victory that this race has been won by in the last, like, eight Olympics, it equals what she won by in this Olympics.

And she said after the race that, like, some part of me was resisting this because I don't want to win a gold medal without my dad.

It's not something I wanted.

She's like, and today I sort of just accepted that this is what it is and I let myself win this.

And it was like, what a profound perspective to have discovered.

I know.