Winning an Olympic medal is the greatest achievement for any track and field athlete in their career, and because the games only come around once every four years, almost everything has to go right in order for you to get one. In the 2021 Olympics, 13 American women won Olympic medals, marking success on their incredibly long track and field journeys. But how good do you actually have to be in order to become a future an Olympic medalist? There is no way to no for certain what the future holds for any athlete. However, the most recent Olympics is teaching us exactly what you must do if you want to make it as an Olympian, even before the days when you actually turn professional.

To answer this question I reviewed every American woman who won an individual medal in Tokyo. What I found is that they fit in to three categories. The superstars, the champions, and the overachievers. No matter what, if you are really going to bring home any hardware from the Olympic games, you had better get your resume together by the time you finish college to make the cut.

The Superstars 

Starting off with the superstars of track and field. These women made it very clear that they were head and shoulders above their peers by either breaking collegiate records in their events at the Division 1 level, and winning national championships while they were at it. The only exception to this rule starts with Allyson Felix who was so good out of high school that she skipped college and famously won an Olympic silver medal in the 200 meter dash at 18 years old in 2004. If that’s not superstar status, I don’t know what is, and she came away with a bronze medal in the Tokyo games of 2020. 

However, alongside her were Raevyn Rogers in the 800, Raven Saunders in the Shot put, Sydney McLaughlin in the 400 hurdles, and Athing Mu in the 800. They each earned bronze, silver, and two gold medals respectively. Both Raevyn Rogers and Raven Saunders broke collegiate records in their events and won multiple National championships at the D1 level, and started winning them as freshmen. Sydney McLaughlin and Athing Mu did the exact same thing, breaking collegiate records, and winning national titles, but they turned pro immediately after their freshman seasons, so we will never know how many  they could have won if they stuck around a little bit longer. Superstars are special because by the time they are 18 years old, they do what they do best, better than anyone in college can. They also make sure when they leave college, if they even choose to go at all, they go down as the greatest of all time.

The Champions

Most Olympians are not superstars, but they are national champions. To be clear, if you win even one NCAA national championship at the Division 1 level, you are a champion. Which means you clearly have what it takes to win at a high level, and the Olympics just might become your proving ground. However, champions also may take time to develop where some of them may not even have qualified for nationals as freshmen, but later won the entire event. Molly Seidel was a champion in all three NCAA seasons between cross country, indoor, and outdoor by the time she graduated from Notre Dame. Finishing her career on a tear. The truth is that it only took her so long to figure out how to win because the NCAA didn’t have an event long enough for her to run, because she is an Olympic bronze medalist in the marathon. In addition Gabby Thomas in the 200 meter, Courtney Frerichs in the steeplechase, Brittney Reese in the long jump, and Keni Harrison in the 100 hurdles all became NCAA champions either in their junior or senior year seasons.  They each won a bronze and 3 silver medals respectively.

Their dominance was almost always pretty clear early on as they won almost everything they could at the conference level. But finding national championship success normally doesn’t happen overnight unless you are a true superstar, and they used almost every ounce of NCAA eligibility that they had to figure it out.

The Overachievers (All Americans) 

Any athlete who doesn’t win an NCAA championship at the very least as an individual is not supposed to become an Olympian, much less win a medal if they do. Because if you are not even the best in your event in college, then taking on the world is a bit of a stretch. However, this group could actually be renamed the All Americans. They were all NCAA championship finalists by the time they graduated college, but they just never actually won a gold medal when they did. Dalilah Muhammad during her time at USC never won a medal individually at any NCAA championship. But she did make the finals several times. Yet she went on to improve her times so much after college that she earned a silver medal at the Olympics in the 400 hurdles.  Valerie Allman also competed in the Pac 12 at Stanford and never finished higher than third which she did twice in the discus throw. Today she is an Olympic gold medalist which I’m sure means much more than any NCAA championship ever could.

Standing out from the crowd is Katie Nageotte who is the only Olympic medalist to actually transfer out of Division 1 entirely. As a pole vaulter she began her career at Dayton where she qualified for the national championship meet but did not get close to a final when she did. As a sophomore she underachieved, failing to get back to the national meet. She made the decision to transfer to division 2 Ashland University, where she won D2 national championships for both the indoor and outdoor season as a senior. Today she is an Olympic gold medalist in the pole vault, which proves that you don’t have to be D1 in order to win at the highest levels. The truth is that overachievers were always good, but nobody honestly saw them becoming this good because they never put it all together until after they turned professional.

The Bottom Line

It takes a special type of athlete to become an Olympian and bring back with hardware when you do. Almost half of the American women who became medalists were superstars. The type of women, whom by the time they were 19 years old were the best athlete in all of America not already on the pro circuit in their events. Even more of them were D1 national champions, but they didn’t start out that way, and their journey to the top of the leader boards was never really a question of if they could do it, but rather if they would do it. But the overachievers on this list, who battled their way up to becoming All Americans in college, prove that even if you don’t win at the highest levels in college, you should not give up on your dream. The Olympics is a competition for the best athletes in the world, and in order to truly become the best, you have to chase the dream long enough to see what your potential truly is. Furthermore for those who never won it all in college, but eventually earned Olympic medals, I’m sure they would consider that a fair trade.

KNOW THE GAME. WIN THE GAME.

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