Five years ago, when Florence’sGabby Thomas moved down to Austin, Texas to begin her professional running career, her new coach Tonja Buford-Bailey decided to test her out.
Thomas moved to Austin a few weeks ahead of the rest of Buford-Bailey’s running group, and Buford-Bailey put her through circuits from 100 to 400 meters. Thomas came from a background of short, quick, power training at Harvard, and Buford-Bailey wanted to stretch out that training. The workouts were hard, but Thomas was “real tough” and got through them without much difficulty, Buford-Bailey said.
“I think it gave her the confidence to see that she could basically run anything,” Buford-Bailey said. “There’s no limits to what she can do. Don’t identify me as a 100 runner, don’t identify me as a 200 runner, don’t identify me as a 400 runner. I can pretty much do any of the sprints that I need to do if I had to.”
Five years later, at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Thomas did exactly that. She won gold in all three events she participated in – the 200, the 4x100 relay and the 4x400 relay, joining swimmer Torri Huske and gymnast Simone Biles for the gold medal lead on Team USA.
Thomas’ Paris performance puts her in an elite group of American women who have won three gold medals in track and field at the same Olympics. That list includes Wilma Rudolph (1960), Valerie Brisco-Hooks (1984), Florence Griffith-Joyner (1988) and Allyson Felix (2012). She joins Felix, whose 2012 Olympic performance helped inspire Thomas to start running track atWilliston Northampton School, as the only American woman to win gold in the 200, 4x100 and 4x400 at the same Olympics.
Thomas now holds five career Olympic medals, adding the three golds in Paris to her 200 bronze and 4x100 silver from the Tokyo Games.
In the 200, her specialty, Thomas entered the final as the favorite following two strong performances in her heat and semifinal. She passed 100 gold medalist Julien Alfred on the turn and easily won gold by 0.25 seconds, with a time of 21.83 seconds.
“It was the same kind of dominance that we saw in high school, although for the high school meets, it was that but way more,” said Martha McCullagh, Thomas’ high school track coach who was in Paris to watch her run. “Now she’s running against the best in the world. You wouldn’t expect your high school athlete that dominated everything, when you get to the world stage, would still be dominant.”
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Later that night, Thomas and her family and friends gathered at an afterparty at the New Balance hospitality house to celebrate the first American gold medalist in the 200 since Felix in 2012.
Two days later, Thomas ran the third leg of the 4x100 as the Americans advanced to Friday’s final despite a slow exchange between Thomas and Twanisha Terry between the second and third legs. On Friday, led by Sha’Carri Richardson’s anchor leg, Team USA won gold in the 4x100 with a time of 41.78. It was the Americans’ 12th gold medal in the 4x100, an event they have now won at three of the last four Olympics.
But Thomas’ Games weren’t over yet. On Saturday, she ran the final event of the Olympics, the 4x400. As the only member of the 4x400 squad to also participate in the 4x100, Thomas did not run in qualifying on Friday, but subbed in for the final and ran the third leg, just as she did in the 4x100.
The U.S. women distanced themselves from the field on Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s second leg, and Thomas ran a time of 49.40 to keep the Americans in the lead. They took gold with a time of 3:27.15 – well ahead of silver medalists Netherlands at 3:19.50. The U.S. time broke a 36-year old American record from the 1988 Seoul Olympics and is the second-fastest time in the history of the event, just 0.10 seconds shy of the Soviet Union’s world record, also set at the Seoul Games. This was the eighth straight Olympics the U.S. has won gold in the 4x400.
“We were watching people win medals all week,” Thomas said after the race. “I was so inspired watching my teammates do what they do. I know what it takes. I know how hard it is to win a medal in track and field. It’s a very cut-throat sport, especially at this level. I was absolutely inspired and very motivated to do it with these girls.”
Thomas, now 27, moved to Florence in 2007 when her mother, Jennifer Randall, took a professorship at UMass. At the insistence of Randall, she started running track in seventh grade at Williston, and immediately flashed the speed and the smile that the world has come to know over the past two weeks.
After 12 New England titles and five school records, Thomas graduated from Williston in 2015. She chose Harvard over an array of national track powerhouses and won 22 Ivy League titles in three years of competing for the Crimson before turning pro.
Thomas graduated with a degree in neurobiology and global health and health policy from Harvard in 2019 and then earned a master’s degree in public health at the University of Texas in 2022. In addition to her training, Thomas volunteers part-time at a hypertension clinic in Austin for uninsured patients. After her track career concludes, she’s said she’d like to run a hospital or a health equity non-profit organization, and she wants to start a foundation dedicated to increasing healthcare access.
