Exclusive Interviews
April 10, 2020 10:09PM EDT
The Tokyo Olympics was postponed for a year due to COVID-19. Now, Olympians Kelley O’Hara & Colleen Quigley reveal how Team USA is coping with the change.
Olympic gold medalist Kelley O’Hara, 31, told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY that the reaction from her teammates on the U.S. Women’s Soccer team to the Tokyo Olympics being pushed until 2021 was very level headed. “It’s kind of like, oh man, that’s so crazy but then it’s just like back to business as usual.” The Utah Royals player, who spoke to HL while promoting her new partnership with Beast Brands, explained: “Whenever we have to expect to be peaking and at our best that’s when we’re going to do it. So they really hasn’t been a lot of back and forth with the team on it…at the end of the day, it is what it is.”
Team USA indoor mile champion Colleen Quigley, 27, who previously competed in the 2016 Olympics, told HL how a Zoom call with hundreds of her fellow competitors helped change her mind about the postponement. “Hearing about how athletes from other sports have been affected by the closing of pools, gyms, etc., it became apparent to me that a postponement to the games would make a lot of sense. That really helped me change my perspective from one that was against a postponement to one where now I see how this is the best thing for all those involved – the athletes, our community and the world.”
Kelley echoed Colleen’s sentiments and told HL, “let’s make sure that everybody can stay safe and healthy. We can be individually doing our part in the bigger collective to help and this as quickly as possible and flatten the curve. And that is the most important thing. At the end of the day sports or sports but this thing is life and death and we all play a part in contributing to how long this is around.”
When it comes to their training both athletes revealed that things have drastically shifted. “We don’t know when we will be able to get back on the track to race at all yet,” Colleen told HL, “so for the time being my teammates and I have gone back to more of a base-building phase of training, with longer workouts to build strength and increase our aerobic base. We usually do this type of training more in the fall, but it seems like a good time to build in extra base and become super strong athletes and build in speed into our training later when we know when we will be able to race.”
Kelley is staying active but told HL she’s not stressing over it. “We’re no
