Athlete - Blog Posts
I want to see the world through your eyes. I want to know what it is like to be unnoticed, to know how the wind can feel without running through it. I want to see how you see me, not as what everyone wants me to be, but just as I am. Just as me.
Inside the Artist #2
I’d love to show you a little more
Cowgirls rock!
Cait Oponski - Cowgirl Cait
I bought those for him…
കോടിക്കണക്കിനു ഇന്ത്യക്കാരുടെ സ്വപ്നം ഒടുവിൽ യാഥാർത്ഥ്യമായി! നീണ്ട 13 വർഷങ്ങൾക്ക് ശേഷം ഇന്ത്യയ്ക്കായി ഒരു വ്യക്തിഗത ഒളിമ്പിക് സ്വർണ്ണ മെഡൽ നേടിയ നീരജ് ചോപ്രയ്ക്ക് ഹൃദയം നിറഞ്ഞ അഭിനന്ദനങ്ങൾ! The dream of a billion Indians has finally come true! Hearty congratulations to Neeraj Chopra on winning an individual Olympic gold medal for India after a long spell of 13 years! #olympics #tokyo #sports #sport #athlete #olympicgames #trackandfield #athletics #olympic #athletes #champion #teamindia #worldchampion #bhfyp #goldmedal #🇮🇳❤️ https://www.instagram.com/p/CSRi7ApJp7i/?utm_medium=tumblr
Suzy Chaffee, A Liberated Beauty
by Marian Christy, ''The Lebanon Daily News'', March 17, 1975
Beautiful blonde Suzy Chaffee, the glamorous model and Olympic skier recently turned down 'Playboy' magazine and $10,000 to pose for a nude picture layout.
Then Town & Country magazine made a similar proposition and Suzy jumped at the chance.
"The difference", says Suzy about the modest, full-length side view of her wearing nothing but olive oil and a pair of skis "is that skiing is an exhilarating that requires a highly-boned body beautiful, The statement I made with that picture has nothing to do with sex.".
Suzy, a wholesome-looking 29-year-old model who also does the Dannon Yogurt television commercials, says she and 'Town & Country' wanted to do a "tasteful" nude with a sportive tie-in. At the end of the all-day photo session which, incidentally was staged atop a remote mountain overlooking Lake Tahoe, Suzy expressed a great sense of personal accomplishment.
"I felt I had finally expressed myself." she says.
Suzy's best friend, Tish Greene, 27, a champion equestrian accompanied the photographer, Douglas Kirkland. Suzy, a bubbly extrovert, says she needed strong female moral support from someone who understood her motives.
"I did the nude because I want to alert women that active sports are a way of conditioning the body.", she says "A woman should be able to stand in front of a mirror with or without clothes and like the way her body looks. Frankly, I needed to have an enlightened female to cheer me on." says Suzy. "We both believe that sports are an exciting way of liberating the female body."
Liberation on any level is hard to come by.
Recently the Hart Ski Company of Saint Paul, MN asked her to endorse their products. When final contract negotiations got under way, a Hart executive made an indelible impression. "He told me I'd surely marry a millionaire and therefore I wouldn't be be needing much money from the endorsement." says Suzy about the contract she never signed.
On women's liberation:
"When a woman gets really angry at the way things are, a tough determination sets in. Then she discovers it's a big challenge to get your point across. If a woman has any success in blazing a trail - however minor - she begins to to feel the tremendous 'up' of accomplishment. But you've really got to be mad first.".
Suzy, a UCLA dropout is deep into mind development courses that further build confidence through self-awareness. Her mother, Stevia Korzan Chaffee, an Olympic skier of the late '30s never went to college. "My mother is a brilliant, sophisticated, well-read woman who has spunk and great incentive." she says. "These are the things that count and you can't find them in a classroom."
Suzy's father, Keene Chaffee, an engineer, who is part owner of a Rutland, VT firm. Patch Wagner is perfecting an invention of a carburetor which cuts down on pollution. Did her parents object to her posing in the nude?
"My parents are incredibly modern." says Suzy. "At a certain point in life, the children become the teachers of the parents. They were against the Playboy layout and I respected their opinions. They supported me when I did the Town & Country nude.". Before Suzy's grandmother, 84 year-old Helen Chaffee was shown the magazine with Suzy on the cover - the nude was carefully removed. "That's where the generation gap exists." laughs Suzy.
There has been no lack of suitors in Suzy's life but she has never married. " I have seen lots of beautiful qualities in a lot of different men", she says "But I have never found all the beautiful qualities in one man.". If and when Suzy does marry, it will be an open marriage because she is a believer in the "totality" of freedom.
Suzy says "It's foolish for society to impose the restriction of one man to the married woman. I'm not advocating sexual promiscuity but I think it' possible for a woman to have many kinds of relationships with many men and it shouldn't affect the status of the marriage. The husband in turn should have the same freedoms."
Suzy Chaffee, a thoroughly modern woman feels that the nude photo has opened prestigious new doors. Other status magazines want to talk about nude layouts. And she's just signed to a syndicated television show, 'World of Skiing' to air coast-to-coast in November 1975. Suzy, the host, will interview glamour skiers on and off the slopes of the world's big-name resorts. "Skiers are in love with a risk sport and they're uninhibited - even in conversation," she says.
About the nude picture that boosted her career: "The streaking syndrome started a new feeling about freeing the body. Nude beaches are getting more common. The world was ready for Suzy in her birthday suit.".
Todays run (4/21/25):
Total distance: 1.58 miles
Avg pace: 13:34/mile
Total time: 21:29 min
Goal pace: 1.5 miles in 12:50
Do you know how much strength you need to manage such a high-adrenaline and high-maneuverability broom sport? He trains frequently as well. My man might not be buff or overly big, but he is athletic and does have muscles.
He's also someone who has been in physical fights before and frequently ran from bullies as a child. He might have been scrawny and short as a child due to neglect, but he grew into a healthy, properly built physique over time at Hogwarts.
describing harry as "an insanely athletic man" while all he does is sit on a flying broom is crazy work
Hard to Believe more people haven't told Amy Purdy she beautiful, I mean she looks Amazing even without Make Up.
Amy Purdy at the Runway of Dreams Foundation NYFW 24
I decided to combine my recent drawing of Amy Purdy with footage of the fashion show itself; I think it turned out very well and I couldn't happier with the results myself.
Amy Purdy modeling at Runway of Dreams
I recently decided to make a drawing based on Amy Purdy modeling Victoria's Secret VSX at the Runway of Dreams Foundation, during their 2024 New York Fashion Week show.
Amy Purdy modeling for Victoria's Secret at Runway of Dreams Foundation's 2024 New York Fashion Week Show.
Amy Purdy snorkeling off the coast Maui, Hawaii in May 2018.
I decided to remake my previous Animation effort in Glorious Color; I think did good job and couldn't be happier with how it turned out.
I enjoyed make this Amy Purdy's my favorite Athele because her humble and friendly personality; She's also a very brave woman, coming back to the sport she loved most after nearly losing her life to Meningtis at age 19.
Amy also made history by becoming one of the first Paralympic Snowboarders in the 2014 Paralympics were she earned the bronze medal representing Team USA.
Here's a GIF of the photoshoot that inspired it.
I recently decided to try my hand at rotoscoping, I based this piece off a photoshoot; I saw of my favorite athlete Amy Purdy, I think did well considering I'm not a professional animator. I'm happy with this one it sure was a lot of fun to make.
My Attempt rotoscoping I call Amymation and the inspiration for it Paralympic Snowboader Amy Purdy.
I recently decided to try my hand at rotoscoping, I based this piece off a photoshoot; I saw of my favorite athlete Amy Purdy, I think did well considering I'm not a professional animator. I'm happy with this one it sure was a lot of fun to make.
Amy Purdy doing what she does best.
Amy Purdy in the Beyond the Bib (2018) web series.
Amy Purdy's 2016 photoshoot for Strong Fitness Magazine.
Amy Purdy's 2012 Element Eden Collection
Olympian Abby Wambach’s Barnard College Graduation Speech Transcript
Greetings to President Beilock, Barnard faculty, trustees, and honorees: Katherine Johnson, Anna Quindlen, and Rhea Suh.
And to each of the 619 bad-ass women of the Barnard graduating class of 2018: Congratulations!
Doesn’t it feel like the second you figure anything out in life, it ends and you’re forced to start all over again?
Experts call these times of life “transitions.” I call them terrifying.
I went through a terrifying transition recently when I retired from soccer.
The world tries to distract us from our fear during these transitions by creating fancy ceremonies for us. This graduation is your fancy ceremony. Mine was the ESPYs, a nationally televised sports award show. I had to get dressed up for that just like you got dressed up for this, but they sent me a really expensive fancy stylist. It doesn’t look like you all got one. Sorry about that.
So it went like this: ESPN called and told me they were going to honor me with their inaugural icon award. I was humbled, of course, to be regarded as an icon. Did I mention that I’m an icon?
I received my award along with two other incredible athletes: basketball’s Kobe Bryant and football’s Peyton Manning. We all stood on stage together and watched highlights of our careers with the cameras rolling and the fans cheering—and I looked around and had a moment of awe. I felt so grateful to be there—included in the company of Kobe and Peyton. I had a momentary feeling of having arrived: like we women had finally made it.
Then the applause ended and it was time for the three of us to exit stage left. And as I watched those men walk off the stage, it dawned on me that the three of us were stepping away into very different futures.
Each of us, Kobe, Peyton and I—we made the same sacrifices, we shed the same amount of blood sweat and tears, we’d left it all on the field for decades with the same ferocity, talent and commitment—but our retirements wouldn’t be the same at all. Because Kobe and Peyton walked away from their careers with something I didn’t have: enormous bank accounts. Because of that they had something else I didn’t have: freedom. Their hustling days were over; mine were just beginning.
Later that night, back in my hotel room, I laid in bed and thought: this isn’t just about me, and this isn’t just about soccer.
We talk a lot about the pay gap. We talk about how we U.S. women overall still earn only 80 cents on the dollar compared to men, and black women make only 63 cents, while Latinas make 54 cents. What we need to talk about more is the aggregate and compounding effects of the pay gap on women’s lives. Over time, the pay gap means women are able to invest less and save less so they have to work longer. When we talk about what the pay gap costs us, let's be clear. It costs us our very lives.
And it hit me that I’d spent most of my time during my career the same way I'd spent my time on that ESPYs stage. Just feeling grateful. Grateful to be one of the only women to have a seat at the table. I was so grateful to receive any respect at all for myself that I often missed opportunities to demand equality for all of us.
But as you know, women of Barnard—CHANGE. IS. HERE.
Women have learned that we can be grateful for what we have while also demanding what we deserve.
Like all little girls, I was taught to be grateful. I was taught to keep my head down, stay on the path, and get my job done. I was freaking Little Red Riding Hood.
You know the fairy tale: It’s just one iteration of the warning stories girls are told the world over. Little Red Riding Hood heads off through the woods and is given strict instructions: Stay on the path. Don’t talk to anybody. Keep your head down hidden underneath your Handmaid’s Tale cape.
And she does… at first. But then she dares to get a little curious and she ventures off the path. That’s of course when she encounters the Big Bad Wolf and all hell breaks loose. The message is clear: Don’t be curious, don’t make trouble, don’t say too much or BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN.
I stayed on the path out of fear, not of being eaten by a wolf, but of being cut, being benched, losing my paycheck.
If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing it would be this:
“Abby, you were never Little Red Riding Hood; you were always the wolf.”
So when I was entrusted with the honor of speaking here today, I decided that the most important thing for me to say to you is this:
BARNARD WOMEN—CLASS OF 2018—WE. ARE. THE. WOLVES.
In 1995, around the year of your birth, wolves were re-introduced into Yellowstone National Park after being absent for seventy years.
In those years, the number of deer had skyrocketed because they were unchallenged, alone at the top of the food chain. They grazed away and reduced the vegetation, so much that the river banks were eroding.
Once the wolves arrived, they thinned out the deer through hunting. But more significantly, their presence changed the behavior of the deer. Wisely, the deer started avoiding the valleys, and the vegetation in those places regenerated. Trees quintupled in just six years. Birds and beavers started moving in. The river dams the beavers built provided habitats for otters and ducks and fish. The animal ecosystem regenerated. But that wasn’t all. The rivers actually changed as well. The plant regeneration stabilized the river banks so they stopped collapsing. The rivers steadied—all because of the wolves’ presence.
See what happened here?
The wolves, who were feared as a threat to the system, turned out to be its salvation.
Barnard women, are you picking up what I’m laying down here?
Women are feared as a threat to our system—and we will also be our society’s salvation.
Our landscape is overrun with archaic ways of thinking about women, about people of color, about the “other,” about the rich and the poor, about the the powerful and the powerless—and these ways of thinking are destroying us.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
We will not Little Red Riding Hood our way through life. We will unite our pack, storm the valley together and change the whole bloody system.
Throughout my life, my pack has been my team.
Teams need a unifying structure, and the best way to create one collective heartbeat is to establish rules for your team to live by. It doesn’t matter what specific page you’re all on, just as long as you’re all on the same one.
Here are four rules I’ve used to unite my pack and lead them to gold.
Rule One: MAKE FAILURE YOUR FUEL
Here’s something the best athletes understand, but seems like a hard concept for non-athletes to grasp. Non-athletes don’t know what to do with the gift of failure. So they hide it, pretend it never happened, reject it outright—and they end up wasting it.
Listen: Failure is not something to be ashamed of, it's something to be POWERED by. Failure is the highest octane fuel your life can run on. You gotta learn to make failure your fuel.
When I was on the Youth National Team, only dreaming of playing alongside Mia Hamm. You know her? Good. I had the opportunity to visit the National Team’s locker room. The thing that struck me most wasn’t my heroes' grass-stained cleats or their names and numbers hanging above their lockers—it was a picture. It was a picture that someone had taped next to the door so that It would be the last thing every player saw before she headed out to the training pitch.
You might guess it was a picture of their last big win, of them standing on a podium accepting gold medals—but it wasn’t. It was a picture of their longtime rival—the Norwegian national team—celebrating after having just beaten the USA in the 1995 World Cup.
In that locker room, I learned that in order to become my very best—on the pitch and off—I’d need to spend my life letting the feelings and lessons of failure transform into my power. Failure is fuel. Fuel is power.
Women, listen to me. We must embrace failure as our fuel instead of accepting it as our destruction.
As Michelle Obama recently said: "I wish that girls could fail as well as men do and be okay. Because let me tell you watching men fail up—it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating to see men blow it and win. And we hold ourselves to these crazy, crazy standards."
Wolf Pack: Fail up. Blow it, and win.
Rule Two: LEAD FROM THE BENCH
Imagine this: You’ve scored more goals than any human being on the planet—female or male. You’ve co-captained and led Team USA in almost every category for the past decade. And you and your coach sit down and decide together that you won’t be a starter in your last World Cup for Team USA.
So… that sucked.
You’ll feel benched sometimes, too. You’ll be passed over for the promotion, taken off the project—you might even find yourself holding a baby instead of a briefcase—watching your colleagues “get ahead.”
Here’s what’s important. You are allowed to be disappointed when it feels like life’s benched you. What you aren’t allowed to do is miss your opportunity to lead from the bench.
During that last World Cup, my teammates told me that my presence, my support, my vocal and relentless belief in them from the bench is what gave them the confidence they needed to win us that championship.
If you’re not a leader on the bench, don’t call yourself a leader on the field. You’re either a leader everywhere or nowhere.
And by the way: the fiercest leading I’ve ever seen has been done between mother and child. Parenting is no bench. It just might be the big game.
Wolf Pack: Wherever you’re put, lead from there.
Rule Three: CHAMPION EACH OTHER
During every 90-minute soccer match there are a few magical moments when the ball actually hits the back of the net and a goal is scored. When this happens, it means that everything has come together perfectly—the perfect pass, the perfectly timed run, every player in the right place at exactly the right time: all of this culminating in a moment in which one player scores that goal.
What happens next on the field is what transforms a bunch of individual women into a team. Teammates from all over the field rush toward the goal scorer. It appears that we’re celebrating her: but what we’re REALLY celebrating is every player, every coach, every practice, every sprint, every doubt, and every failure that this one single goal represents.
You will not always be the goal scorer. And when you are not—you better be rushing toward her.
Women must champion each other. This can be difficult for us. Women have been pitted against each other since the beginning of time for that one seat at the table. Scarcity has been planted inside of us and among us. This scarcity is not our fault. But it is our problem. And it is within our power to create abundance for women where scarcity used to live.
As you go out into the world: Amplify each others’ voices. Demand seats for women, people of color and all marginalized people at every table where decisions are made. Call out each other’s wins and just like we do on the field: claim the success of one woman, as a collective success for all women.
Joy. Success. Power. These are not pies where a bigger slice for her means a smaller slice for you. These are infinite. In any revolution, the way to make something true starts with believing it is. Let’s claim infinite joy, success, and power—together.
Wolf Pack: Her Victory is your Victory. Celebrate it.
Rule Four: DEMAND THE BALL
When I was a teenager, I was lucky enough to play with one of my heroes, Michelle Akers. She needed a place to train since there was not yet a women’s professional league. Michelle was tall like I am, built like I’d be built, and the most courageous soccer player I’d ever seen play. She personified every one of my dreams.
We were playing a small sided scrimmage—5 against 5. We were eighteen-year-olds and she was—Michelle Akers—a chiseled, thirty-year-old powerhouse. For the first three quarters of the game, she was taking it easy on us, coaching us, teaching us about spacing, timing and the tactics of the game.
By the fourth quarter, she realized that because of all of this coaching, her team was losing by three goals. In that moment, a light switched on inside of her.
She ran back to her own goalkeeper, stood one yard away from her, and screamed:
GIVE. ME. THE. EFFING. BALL.
And the goalkeeper gave her the effing ball.
And she took that ball and she dribbled through our entire effing team and she scored.
Now this game was winner’s keepers, so if you scored you got the ball back. So, as soon as Michelle scored, she ran back to her goalie, stood a yard away from her and screamed:
GIVE ME THE BALL.
The keeper did. And again she dribbled though us and scored. And then she did it again. And she took her team to victory.
Michelle Akers knew what her team needed from her at every moment of that game.
Don't forget that until the fourth quarter, leadership had required Michelle to help, support, and teach, but eventually leadership called her to demand the ball.
Women. At this moment in history leadership is calling us to say:
GIVE ME THE EFFING BALL.
GIVE ME THE EFFING JOB.
GIVE ME THE SAME PAY THAT THE GUY NEXT TO ME GETS.
GIVE ME THE PROMOTION.
GIVE ME THE MICROPHONE.
GIVE ME THE OVAL OFFICE.
GIVE ME THE RESPECT I’VE EARNED AND GIVE IT TO MY WOLF PACK TOO.
In closing, I want to leave you with the most important thing I’ve learned since leaving soccer.
When I retired, my sponsor Gatorade surprised me at a meeting with the plan for my send-off commercial. The message was this: Forget Me.
They’d nailed it. They knew I wanted my legacy to be ensuring the future success of the sport I’d dedicated my life to. If my name were forgotten, that would mean that the women who came behind me were breaking records, winning championships and pushing the game to new heights. When I shot that commercial I cried.
A year later, I found myself coaching my ten-year old daughter’s soccer team. I’d coached them all the way to the championship. (#Humblebrag.) One day I was warming the team up, doing a little shooting drill. I was telling them a story about when I retired. And one of those little girls looked up at me and said: “So what did you retire from?” And I looked down at her and I said, “SOCCER.” And she said, “Oh. Who did you play for?” And I said, “THE. UNITED. STATES. OF. AMERICA.” And she said, “Oh. Does that mean you know Alex Morgan?”
Be careful what you wish for, Barnard. They forgot me.
But that’s okay. Being forgotten in my retirement didn’t scare me. What scared me was losing the identity the game gave me. I defined myself as Abby Wambach, soccer player—the one who showed up and gave 100 percent to my team and fought alongside my wolf pack to make a better future for the next generation.
Without soccer who would I be?
A few months after retirement, I began creating my new life. I met Glennon and our three children and I became a wife, a mother, a business owner and an activist.
And you know who I am now? I’m still the same Abby. I still show up and give 100 percent—now to my new pack—and I still fight every day to make a better future for the next generation.
You see, soccer didn’t make me who I was. I brought who I was to soccer, and I get to bring who I am wherever I go. And guess what? So do you.
As you leave here today and everyday going forward: Don’t just ask yourself, “What do I want to do?” Ask yourself: “WHO do I want to be?” Because the most important thing I've learned is that what you do will never define you. Who you are always will.
And who you are—Barnard women—are the wolves.
Surrounding you today is your wolf pack. Look around.
Don’t lose each other.
Leave these sacred grounds united, storm the valleys together, and be our salvation.
