Aug 23, 2020
"I really need athletes and coaches and executives within national governing bodies to understand... there is no gray area." - Summer Sanders.
We agree. There is no gray area when it comes to clean sport. There is also no gray area when it comes to how much we loved this conversation with Summer Sanders. She is exactly the person you hope she would be - real, funny, relatable, and an absolute inspiration in sport and in life. She also happens to be a 4-time Olympic medalist (including 2 golds) and has an equally impressive career in sports commentating.
Kara and Shanna lead this conversation and cover many aspect's of Summer's story from her childhood growing up in California, splitting time between divorced parents who both shaped her as a person, to her meteoric rise to multiple Olympic gold medals by the age of 19 and to her extensive resume in sports broadcasting.
Summer shares so many great stories in this episode. She talks about how barely missing an Olympic team at the age of 15 was exactly the failure she needed at the time. She describes every detail of her final gold-medal winning race in Barcelona and what it was like standing on the podium while the Star Spangled Banner played.
She discusses her life-long dream of being on TV and how that led to her career in broadcasting after the 1992 Olympics. Summer gets emotional talking about her experiences as a runner including her first marathon in NYC and running Boston in 2013, where she left the finish line just 15 minutes before the first bomb went off on Boylston.
Of course, we also ask her about the clean sport culture in swimming, when she became aware of doping herself, and how she dealt with it during her career. Then, we close with her hopes for the future of sport which are as black and white as they can be when it comes to this very important topic.
Summer is a hero to many in the pool and in front of the camera. We were absolutely honored to have her join us.