Gabby Thomas Wants Track to Evolve Past an ‘Amateur Sport Like We Are Now’

Three-time Olympic gold medalist Gabby Thomas is ready for a new era of track.

“I want to exist like a professional sport, and not an amateur sport like we are now,” Thomas said on Front Office Sports Today.

Coming off her three dominant performances in the Paris Olympics, the 27-year-old sprinter says she wants to see a league with consistent competition and pay, and she says she can see that world “on the horizon.”

That evolution to launch track into the national consciousness more than once every four years picked up steam in the past few months, with the popular Netflix docuseries Sprint and the first edition of Alexis Ohanian’s Athlos track meet.

“We sparked the interest from the Box To Box film producers to make a show about us,” she said of the makers of Drive to Survive. “We sparked the interest of these people who want to invest in our sport and start these new track leagues because we have such an interesting product.

So I really do think it’s the personalities of the athletes that are kind of spearheading this new phase, this new era of track and field,” Thomas said.