With a second-round national record of 15.02 meters, Thea LaFond of Dominica won the first-ever Olympic medal for her nation at the Olympic Games in Paris on Saturday.
The ground-breaking athlete, according to World Athletics, had already shown promise this year when she won gold at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow with a national record of 15.01 meters, which was the best this year until she broke it herself.
The 30-year-old moved to the United States from Dominica when she was five years old. She began taking dancing lessons at the age of 13. She did, however, discover track and field at John F. Kennedy High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, before going on to compete at the University of Maryland, after her family could no longer afford dance lessons. She competed as a multi-event athlete in the heptathlon and indoor pentathlon, and she enjoyed the process of improving her athletic skills.
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Since then, LaFond has improved her athletics career, focusing on the triple jump since 2016 and winning the 2022 Diamond League title in addition to bronze and silver medals at the 2018 and 2022 Commonwealth Games, respectively.
She met Aaron Gadson, who would later become her coach and spouse after she made her Olympic debut in 2016.
The pioneer told the Associated Press after her victory Saturday night at the Stade de France, “It’s an understatement to say it’s a really big deal. Sometimes you wonder if being from a small country means that you have less accessibility to resources. … But we’ve been really big on (prioritizing) quality and just executing it.”
She added, “My country’s name is Dominica (dah-min-EE-ka). We’re not Dominican Republic, so it’s pronounced differently. We are about roughly 70,000 people. Not 7 million. Not 70 million. Seventy thousand. And it is a gorgeous, gorgeous gem in the Caribbean near to Martinique and Guadeloupe. … Our neighbors also include St. Lucia, Barbados and, further south, Trinidad and Tobago. Our primary language is English. And now they have a gold medal.”
The tiny nation of Dominica lacks facilities for track and field, and this is worrying for many athletes including LaFond.
“The biggest issue has been getting the land allocation for this track,” she said, adding that her country still needs to make progress in developing the infrastructure. “Give us the land, and there will be a track. I’m really hoping this medal kind of lights a fire under all government officials to get that done. I want a place where the next generation doesn’t necessarily have to go overseas.”
Chreign LaFond, LaFond’s brother, and Navy defensive end football player, was seen in a viral video celebrating his sister. Although he was unable to travel to Paris owing to his forthcoming athletic season, his team captured his reaction on camera, informing Chreign of the good news while at practice.
