Because I own my name domain, I keep this domain active as a contact portal and to share a bit about myself in my own words:

I am passionate about protecting athletes from injustices in sport. I am currently devoted to my role as the Director of Athlete and International Relations as the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. I was one of seven Olympians selected by the IOC to be a member of the third cohort of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degree in Sport Ethics and Integrity which I chose to pursue after learning about the state-sponsored doping scheme of Russia and understanding the impact this did have and would have on athletes.

BIO:

I grew up in Texas, Virginia, Germany, Maryland, and Florida as the daughter of a West Point graduate and Lieutenant Colonel in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the U.S. Army (father) and a spunky teacher, seamstress, and baker (mother). My parents required that my brothers and I played at least one sport as a way to instill a focus on health. I was seven years old and living in Virginia when I was presented with three options: softball, soccer, or swimming. At this age, I was also standing on the local neighborhood corner challenging any kid who walked by to a running race after school, so perhaps my parents were also trying to save the neighborhood kids from further torture! I loved to race so I chose swimming. I swam my first competitions in Virginia and continued in Germany when my father was stationed to Heidelberg and West Berlin for the next three years. I competed in the European Forces Swim League representing the Heidelberg Sea Lions and the Berlin Barracudas. After returning stateside at the age of 11, I started twice-daily training and focused on breaststroke events as a member of the University of Maryland Baltimore County Retrievers swim club. My family moved two years later to Gainesville, Florida and I joined the University of Florida campus-based club team called the Florida Aquatics Swim Team. Living in seven different cities before high school was difficult, but having a swim team to be a part of in each new place made the process a lot easier. Plus, the exposure to constant change and a lot of different types of people and cultures was beneficial in terms of personal development. At 14 years old, I jumped from being tied for 71st in the country to placing 5th at the 1992 U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials in the 200 meter breaststroke. It was then that I realized that the Olympic dream may actually be possible for me. One of my favorite races and proudest moments in my swimming career was setting a world record in the 200 individual medley at the short course world championships in Palma de Mallorca in 1993 at the age of 16. The world record I set is still (as of 2023) the longest-standing world record in any women’s individual swimming SCM event of all time (the record stood unbroken for more almost 15 years). At the time, I was enrolled in the demanding, but equally great, high school curriculum of the International Baccalaureate program. I went on to win an Olympic silver medal at the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games in the 400 Individual Medley, become a 13-time U.S. National Champion, NCAA Champion, an Academic All-American while at the University of Florida, and pioneer the use of a new back-to-breast turn that is now used by all elite-level individual medley swimmers. More swim info is on wikipedia. I loved that swimming was so physically and mentally challenging, that I had the opportunity to race every day, and that I had the opportunity in my early career to spend so much time with teammates who were like older brothers to me. Throughout my career, I also had many wonderful open-water experiences as a part of training (see below for some images of some of my favorite dolphin encounters!).

I won multiple silver medals at top-level competitions to athletes who were later proven to have doped. The sacrifices athletes make, and the respect clean athletes show to competitors by competing fairly, need to be honored and protected. My dream is that all Olympic and Paralympic athletes will one day have the option to have a say in the rules and systems that govern their sports and that there will be fair, accessible pathways to restitution should they experience injustices.

Image credits - beach: photo by Photo by Ibrahim Rifath on Unsplash. Photos of me: In competition, Jed Jacobsohn/Allsport. On the Atlanta 1996 Olympic podium, Doug Mills/Associated Press. Talking about integrity in sport, Stephen McCarthy/Web Summit. Swimming with dolphins in Kona, Hawaii, 2006, Shane Gould.