Grit and Glory

Columbia athletes’ path to the 2024 Paris Olympics

By Shreya Khullar

Illustration by Ellie Hodges

Everyone is silent. There is jostling, the brisk squeaking of shoes, and then, the crowd erupts. I squint my eyes at my laptop screen to see what the uproar is about. I rewind the video ten seconds to watch the sequence again. Two opponents in white gear are facing off. The swords between them are glinting silver threads as they lunge then parry against each other. Cheering breaks out. It’s the 2024 Paris Olympics, and Jackie Dubrovich, CC ’16, has just scored a point for Team USA in the Women’s Foil. They would go on to win the gold.

As I continued to click through videos, one thing became very clear: In this arena, the slightest turn of a foot, the briefest lapse of judgment, determines an athlete’s fate. When I, and other casual Olympic viewers, watch video clips or post-competition interviews, we see the winners on the podium ecstatic with joy or sobbing with relief, but what we don’t see are the hours of toil behind the medals. 

Speaking on training regimens, Dubrovich detailed aspects of the Olympic preparation process including consulting sports psychologists, analyzing video recordings, and abiding by nutrition plans, all in addition to five-hour-a-day training schedules, while Charlotte Buck, CC ’18, two-time Olympian, mentioned the difficulties of balancing 6 a.m. rowing practices while being a pre-med student. I became lost in the chronicle of Bogdan Hamilton, CC ’26, Olympic fencer, who traveled from Montreal to Lima then back to Montreal, and then finally to Paris in a series of coaching sessions and competitions, and when Evita Griskenas, CC ’24, two-time Olympic rhythmic gymnast, recounted her routine flight from New York to Chicago every week to train, I found her description of it as “a little bit crazy” to be a little bit of an understatement. Every athlete expounded on a truth that, while most people acknowledge, they never fully understand the weight of: Being an Olympian requires an incalculable amount of dedication. 

“When you make a decision to do something as big as the Olympics, you just orient your life completely towards that,” Dubrovich said, “The athletes that you see competing, they structure their lives in these four year blocks.” In addition to physically demanding training, the roller coaster of emotions that comes with competing on the international stage can be just as challenging to navigate. “You pour your soul into something and you don’t know if you’re gonna come out and be happy,” she continued. “And that’s a very raw and vulnerable feeling.”

The only people who truly grasp the difficulties that come with competing at this caliber are other Olympians. Many of the athletes mentioned the spirit of camaraderie in the Olympic village born from this mutual understanding. “They knew that everyone was just there to have a good experience,” said Hamilton, recounting a story of how fencers competing for China asked to trade pins even though they would be opponents on the piste a few hours later.  

This feeling of friendship despite the stakes of the competition was both international and inter-sport. “I’ve been joking that the hottest club in the village was the Team USA recovery room,” said Buck. “I got to watch the men’s gymnastic team final with Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles. I got to watch the men’s rugby final with the whole women’s rugby team, including Ilona Maher. We got to watch the women’s rugby final with the whole track team. Tara Davis was there. And truly everyone is as nice as you would expect them to be online.” 

In the moment of competition, however, you are alone—it is just you and your training. Everything has been practiced until movements become unconscious, reflexive. On the day when everything is on the line, you have to “trust the training,” as Grisekenas put it. 

The goal of Olympic athletes is to push the limits of the human body. These athletes understand that great sacrifice is a necessary aspect of achieving this ambition. So, they show up again and again to train, to compete, and to perform. Along with knowing what it takes to get there, they know what it feels like to come out the other end. “Indescribable,” Dubrovich said on winning gold. “Surreal.”