Transcription
[Music] I hate that feeling so much. I just want to, just like, why do I do this? Hey, this, hey, this so bad. I feel my puke, but I don't feel like quitting or giving up. We're hating it so bad. I hate this. I hate this so bad. I feel like I'm gonna puke, and I know it's because I want it, and I want to be perfect, and I want to win so hard.
[Music] I had jello shoved in my sleeping bag when I would go to ski camp. I would ride numerous chair lifts alone. How am I not good enough?
[Music] The hardest part is you, you can't be anybody. You just have to sit in a corner and just be nobody, or be a ghost. And when you're young and you're growing up and you don't know why you're not liked, or why your best friends are, you know, 40-year coaches or the parents of other ski racing kids, it's not easy.
[Music] It has its moments. Now, when it creeps, the way that I felt when I was a kid from when I was bullied, you don't know who you are, what you're doing. You doubt your characteristics, or that you're never going to be good enough for anybody else, let alone yourself. On days when I feel fantastic by myself, it's easy, it's breezy, life goes on. But on days when I feel crappy, or people are attacking my image, or the way that I look, or the size that I am, I have felt my body to be a machine than it is the way that it is, and I need to understand it's this way for a reason. I get called a man, probably on a daily basis. But if they're gonna call you man, be a man, but be a man with an Olympic gold medal. And next year, when it's not a little bit here, you can look like a female. I don't personally think I'm a sex symbol, but for a lot of years, I wanted to be. I struggled internally with myself. I want to be able to to feel attractive or to be attractive, and this is my shot. And, you know, I, I wanted to be sexy, and I wanted to make bobsled sexy. It's not that I didn't know how to do it, but I'm never gonna be a size two, and I need to fully understand that there's an incessant need to push you for perfect. If Barbie was a perfect person, but she'd actually never be able to stand up because technically our legs are too long, and the boobs are too big, and she would fall over. She can't function. Literally, she can't even stand up on herself. But women are definitely judged differently than men for sexuality in sports. I've had comments made from reporters that you would never ask a man, what color my hair is, or if I'm gonna do my makeup, or what my lipstick is, or what clothes on part, or who I'm dating, if I'm on my period, or random things that come up. I am a great bobsledder because of the size that I am, and the shape, and the physical ability that I have. And on bad days, I remind myself I'm back.
[Music] A big part of my tattoos is overcoming that. My tattoos are my story, but they helped me accept who I am and what I am. I've had roughly about a hundred and ninety hours worth of tattoo work on my body. I have two guardian angels for everybody within my life that has passed on, but has made a big difference, or has been very close to me that I no longer have access to, but I know they're above watching over. The last time I saw my uncle, my godfather, it was at a big bobsleigh function.
[Music] Attention.
[Music] [Music] I felt a very big responsibility to give back to the sponsors and all the people that were upstairs.
They said hi, and they give him a hug, expecting to be able to see him again, and I never did. I never saw him again. He ended up in the hospital not long after, and he ended up dying of a heart attack. I wish I could go back and redo that night. I wish I would have said, "Screw it" to people upstairs. I wish I would have given him 20 or 30 minutes more just to say thank you, because that's what that night was really about.
[Music] Life happens. So I'm susceptible, just like anybody else, of real life that occurs within sport. I get random thoughts all the time. I mean, I'm human. I'll randomly think about my ex-husband going through the divorce process. Childhood, I'll think about my sisters calling me "gorilla man hands," and my nickname there because I actually have ginormous hands. I'll be doing something with my hands in the sled, and it'll just all of a sudden they'll come up and be like, "BAM, girl, man hands." I'll think about, I don't think I'm good enough. Like, what if I show up and I just, I crash, or I bomb, or what if I suck and come seventh? Or what? And all of these thoughts happen of, you know, self-doubt, or not training enough, or not. And then you panic of like, is this normal to think this way? What if it's not normal to think this way? What if everything just happened and now, and I was like, "What am I doing?" And I knew it was wrong, but I couldn't help it. But having women's perspective of that, and understanding, okay, well, this week I'm on my period, and you're probably gonna be a little more crazy. Now it's normal to feel that way and to be okay. It's normal to, to not quite fully fill yourself, or, you know what, for this week, you are gonna be about five pounds heavier, so we're gonna need to make sure we eat salads because we still have to make weight. That's the life, and you deal with that. But it was okay for me to think the way that I did, or act accordingly, and it didn't mean I wasn't gonna be successful or achieve my dreams. It was, it was me being human, or having a human moment, and that happened. And I've had to learn how to deal with that and still be able to sit on that sirloin and turn it all off and compete.