Olympic star Gabby Thomas makes appearance on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”

Gabby Thomas celebrates after winning the women's 200-meter final at the 2024 Summer Olympics, last week in Saint-Denis, France.

Gabby Thomas celebrates after winning the women's 200-meter final at the 2024 Summer Olympics, last week in Saint-Denis, France. AP

By CONNOR PIGNATELLO

Staff Writer

Published: 08-14-2024 7:28 PM

Just two days after the closing ceremony wrapped up the 2024 Paris Olympics, three-time gold medalist Gabby Thomas joined Comedy Central’s long-running comedy news show, “The Daily Show” to discuss her Paris experience, her mom and her healthcare advocacy work.

Thomas, who attended the Williston Northampton School from seventh to 12th grade, added on to her bronze in the 200 meters and silver in the 4x100 relay from the Tokyo Olympics with gold medals in the 200, 4x100 and 4x400 in Paris. Her three gold medals tied her with swimmer Torri Huske and gymnast Simone Biles for the lead on Team USA, and she became just the fifth American woman to win three golds in track and field at the same Olympics.

“I’m just so grateful. I really am,” Thoms said. “This is years in the making. I’ve been training for this moment for five years, and so for it all to turn out this way is really incredible for me.”

Thomas, now 27, moved to Florence in 2007 when her mother, Jennifer Randall, took a professorship at UMass. Thomas said she was inspired by Randall, who raised Thomas as a single mother and worked her way up from waitressing to her current position as the Dunn Family Chair of Psychometrics and Test Development and the founding President of the Center for Measurement Justice at the University of Michigan. Randall worked as an Associate Professor in UMass’ College of Education from 2007 to 2022.

“She’s always instilled in me the importance of not only education, but going after your dreams and giving back to your community,” Thomas said. “She was the best role model that I could have ever imagined having. She told me when I was 9, maybe 10 years old, that I had a light in me and that I was going to shine very brightly, and that it was my purpose to do so and give it back to the world. I’ll never forget that conversation. Constantly having that type of validation, that type of a role model to look up to, it got me to where I am.”

Randall was a major influence in Thomas choosing to run track instead of play softball in her seventh grade year at Williston. Thomas finished third in the 100 at New Englands as a seventh grader, and then never lost the race again.

Randall’s work on educational assessments as a tool for racial justice also inspired Thomas’ work in healthcare, where she volunteers at a hypertension clinic for uninsured patients where she lives now in Austin, Texas. Thomas said she learned more about racial disparities in healthcare when she took some sociology courses alongside her neurobiology curriculum at Harvard. 

“It really struck me to my core, especially being a Black woman in America,” Thomas said. “And now that I’m actually seeing it in real-time in Austin, at the volunteer healthcare clinic, there are so many things that we can do better.”

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Thomas said that now that the Olympics are over, she’s excited to return back to Austin, spend some time with her pug, Rico, and her friends and family, get back to her local coffee shop and possibly plan a vacation.

“I just can’t wait to get back to my normal life,” Thomas said.