Olympian Tara Davis-Woodhall Is Still Flying High—While Embracing Her Inner Homebody

This article is part of SELF’s third annual Rest Week, an editorial package dedicated to doing less. Taking care of yourself, physically and emotionally, is impossible without genuine downtime. With that in mind, we’ll be publishing articles up until the new year to help you make a habit of taking breaks, chilling out, and slowing down. (And we’re taking our own advice: The SELF staff will be OOO during this time!) We hope to inspire you to take it easy and get some rest, whatever that looks like for you.

At the Paris Games this summer, Tara Davis-Woodhall soared into the air during the women’s long jump final and didn’t come down until she’d traveled 7.1src meters—and clinched her first Olympic gold. But it was her exhilarated leap into the arms of her husband, Paralympic sprinter Hunter Woodhall, shortly after that would skyrocket her to stardom beyond the track and field universe. It was only fitting that Woodhall would do the same, jumping into Davis-Woodhall’s arms at the Paralympic Games after he nabbed his first gold, earning them golden power-couple status.

The raw excitement pouring out of Davis-Woodhall after her win and her instant desire to share it with her partner tugged at a whole lotta heartstrings. But like most glorious moments, this one takes on even more meaning when you consider what led up to it: In the time since her disappointing sixth-place finish at her first Olympic showing in Tokyo in 2src21, Davis-Woodhall won but then was stripped of a national indoor title in 2src23 (after a positive cannabis test) and the same year, came painfully close to gold at the World Athletics Championships yet ultimately was notched down to silver. But after turning things around with multiple wins early this year, including a gold at the World Athletics Indoor Championships (the slightly smaller cousin to the outdoor World Athletics Championships), she was fired up for Olympic redemption. It’s no wonder she was overcome by emotion when she achieved just that.

Though Davis-Woodhall wrapped up her 2src24 season shortly after, she quickly swapped the track for the public spotlight, jetting off on a press tour and hitting up events like the Las Vegas Formula 1 Grand Prix and the GQ Men of the Year party alongside Woodhall. The couple also moved from Arkansas to Kansas to follow their coach Travis Geopfert to Kansas State University, where Davis-Woodhall has since started a gig as an assistant coach. And all the while, they’ve been keeping up with their nearly 1 million YouTube subscribers. To say they have little downtime is an understatement.

But that’s also why Davis-Woodhall has learned to set boundaries around rest and find opportunities to just be a normal 25-year-old, like seeing her fave artist Billie Eilish in concert with a group of friends. She’s also focused on soaking up every moment of her new whirlwind life.

For our Rest Week package, SELF spoke with the long-jump phenom about bounding to instant fame, the emotional experience of achieving a massive life goal, and how she’s recuperating and regrouping ahead of her 2src25 season.

Kristy Sparow/Getty Images

SELF: Can you take me back to that moment of victory after winning the gold and share a little bit about what that felt like emotionally?

Tara Davis-Woodhall: That moment was so special. I started track when I was four years old, so I’ve been wanting to win Olympic gold for a very long time now. To even be on that stage, I was so grateful from the very beginning. I was like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m here and have Hunter by my side.

When we went to the Tokyo Games, we didn’t have our family, we didn’t have our friends. It was very lonely. So the best thing in Paris was having family and friends and Hunter with me. I just wanted to go and show out for them on the biggest stage. Everyone there had brought me to that moment. So when I was out there, and I saw my family, I was like, “Okay, it’s showtime. Let’s just go for it. Let’s have fun.”

That moment with Hunter—a lot of people asked, “How did you know where he was?” But we talked throughout the entire competition. I had six jumps, and that was the last jump. When I finished, I took a moment. I fell back into the sand, and I was like, “What the heck?” I heard the crowd cheering and yelling, and I just took it in for a second. When I got back up, I sprinted to him, and he called me an Olympic champ. And that moment was just so surreal.

Throughout your Olympic journey, you had such an upbeat, positive attitude. And then you had this amazing win. Has there been any kind of mental come-down since then? How do you feel currently?

I definitely had an Olympic hangover, as they say, but it also wasn’t really a full one because I never had downtime. I feel like the people who have the real hangovers—it’s like, they’re doing something, they’re doing something, and then they stop. But we’ve been continuously on the go since.

The real question is like, What’s next? What am I shooting for? My whole life goal was the Olympic gold, so it’s like, How do I dream more? What more do I want from this sport? And I’ve realized what I definitely want is the world record. I can say now, I figured that out. Mentally, I’m ready for the season to begin, and I’m ready to train. But yeah, for a second, I had this moment of, What am I supposed to do?

You just mentioned that you didn’t have any post-Olympics downtime. I imagine some of that is from you getting thrust into the spotlight. Was that something you expected? How has all that attention felt?

It definitely was not expected. Even with Adam, my agent, we would talk about the Olympics, and we’d talk about winning, but I’d always be like, “if I win.” I wouldn’t say, “when I win.”

Now, it’s unbelievable that we’re in the rooms that we are in, but it’s kinda cool that our sport is being seen, and that’s what I’ve always wanted to do is change how people see the sport. And being in these rooms and saying hi to these people—now they’re maybe going to watch my Instagram, and then watch long jump, and then watch US Olympic Trials and Nationals. That’s the part that I’m excited for.

You’re right, there’s so much visibility—but it’s got to be a little exhausting. I feel like you’ve just been jumping (like literally, jumping!) from one thing to the next. Are you ever stressed out or exhausted?

Hunter and I, we’re built for this, I think…It’s weird. I am stressed sometimes. It is a lot. But it’s not a lot where we can’t handle it. We are so vocal, and we have our boundaries, and we’ve set them, and our agents are our support—they know our boundaries. When we need a break, they give us one. We’re so in tune with our mental health right now and so in tune with our well-being, and our team is, too. So, we’ve learned how to balance it all.

Can you talk to me about those breaks? How do you spend that time?

We stay at home. We don’t leave our house. In reality, we are homebodies. We have two dogs and a cat, so we play with our pets. I am a plant mom, so I tend to all my plants. And we try to catch up on all the Netflix.

What I’m watching just depends on what mood I’m in. If I’m cleaning, I’m putting on Love Island or Love Is Blind—some reality show that’s just mindless where, if I want to sit down and watch it, I already know what’s happening. But at nighttime, we are all crime or comedy or maybe a thriller. Right now, we’re watching From. It’s a scary, scary show.

Switching gears, I’d love to hear about your new job as assistant coach for the Kansas State track team. Why did you decide to take that on? Have you started yet?

I think it’ll help me become a better athlete in my own right. I get to learn my sport in a different way and see it in a different light. I also just want to be someone that I needed in college. I went through a lot of things in college, like injuries, depression, parents divorcing, transferring schools. I went through so much that I feel like I have some knowledge and experience that will help me be a mentor, as well as having been successful in the sport in college. And I’m also only 25, so I’m not that much older than the students and can relate to what they’re going through.

So far, though, I’ve only been to one practice in October and two practices in November. But once we start training this week, I’m going to be there all the time.

So how will you balance training and coaching?

I’ll be training with them. So it’s the best of both worlds, where I can demonstrate, but also, I can watch on my break time or in between my sets and coach that way. Having the chance to just keep on jumping with people is also a competition for me and pushes me to be better.

On that note of just being 25, you’ve experienced a ton at such a young age, and you’ve also been go-go-go this year. Emotionally, do you feel like you’ve processed it yet?

Well, it’s not over yet. And the fun part about that is, when I do take a minute to emotionally process something, something else is happening. It’s like, I kinda just enjoy every moment. I have so many pictures and videos to relive everything. So I’m just trying to stay in the moment.

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/Getty Images

Have there been any pinch-me moments? Or moments where you’ve been like, “I can’t believe this is my life?”

I mean there’ve been so many moments, I don’t even know which one to say. I met Finneas, Billie Eilish’s brother. And I’m a huge fan of Billie Eilish—a massive fan. I saw Post Malone up close in person and took a picture with him, and got to listen to him sing live with just his guitar and a microphone. I met The Rock, and he knew who we were.

Wow, that is so cool. So, those are the highs. But are there also times when you get overwhelmed by it all? I know you talked about just savoring every big moment—but does it ever feel like too much?

I think the only thing is trying to keep up with social media, doing things I don’t normally do. I’m so used to posting my track stuff. I can push out a video on the track really easily because I think track is my personality. So I’m in the weight room, I’m on the track, I’m jumping—I can make cool videos with that. But when I’m going to these events, there’s pressure to look pretty. So the content would be more like me putting makeup on. [Laughs.] It’s a different side of me that I’m not used to.

That makes sense. I also wanted to ask you about your husband Hunter. Do you lean on him for support when things start to feel a little wild?

Oh yeah, he’s my venting person—whatever I gotta say, he gets to hear it. He’s like my in-home therapist when I can’t talk to my actual therapist. He just makes everything better. Even going to these events, I could not imagine going to them alone. It’s like, we get to experience this whole new world together, going from when we were little babies, doing long-distance and trying to make it work, to then doing all these cool things and living so many of our talked-about dreams. We really do lean on each other mentally. If I’m not good, he’s good, and he’s going to try to help me get good, and vice versa.

You just mentioned your therapist, so I have to ask about that—especially with the conversation right now about athletes and mental health. How has therapy helped you out this year?

My therapist helped me the entire three months leading up to the Olympic trials and the Olympics. She was my therapist throughout college. And so I knew this was going to be a stressful time, so I was like [mimes picking up her phone], and she was like, “Oh my gosh, I thought we’d never be able to talk again!” She was so excited to talk. She’s been on leave because she had a baby, which is so fun. But she just emailed and was like, “I’m back!” And I said, “Thank God.” Right now, it’s not that anything bad is happening. I just have a whole other side of my life that isn’t track and field. It’s family stuff, actual real-life problems. And so those are the things that we talk about.

Totally, people forget that athletes are people, too. So, I know you’re also preparing to get back into training. And I imagine you have your sights set on the 2src28 LA Games. What are your big goals looking ahead?

Well, there’s World Championships before the Olympics, so that’s what the goal is first—to get a gold, since I have one from the indoor championships but not the outdoor yet. So that’s the main goal for this coming year. And then in 2src26, it’s an off year for track and field, so there’s no Championships at all. We want to do something for fans to get involved with track, so it can still be relevant. And then in 2src27, we have World Championships, and then 2src28 is already the Olympic Trials. So looking ahead, it’s really about doing what we can to stay afloat.

This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.