Olympian Favor Hamilton finds true gold

As she took center stage no one knew what was going on inside her

Suzy Favor Hamilton has battled hard on and off the track. The world-class runner has overcome anxiety, self-doubt, an eating disorder and depression.

By Gary D'Amato of the Journal Sentinel

July 21, 2012 0

The finish line was 200 meters away. She just had to hold on for 30 more seconds and the gold medal would be hers.

Suzy Favor Hamilton had trained her entire life for this moment. She'd made it her mission to win Olympic gold to honor the memory of her late brother, Dan, who had committed suicide. Smiled that Suzy smile. Told everyone she was going to "do something big" for him.

In two previous Olympic Games, the great middle-distance runner from Stevens Point had failed to win a medal. But this was different. This was for Dan. She'd never pushed herself harder, never been in better shape.

Now, her goal was within reach. On a hot night at Sydney Olympic Stadium, on the other side of the world, she led the 1,500-meter final at the 2000 Olympic Games.

Two hundred meters. Thirty seconds.

Hold on. For Dan.

No one in the world knew what was going on inside her. Not her coach, Peter Tegen. Not her husband, Mark Hamilton. She couldn't tell them, couldn't tell anyone that she had gone to the starting line that night distracted and full of self-doubt, anxiety sapping what little energy she had left for the grueling race ahead.

The first two rounds had taken too much out of her. She had run the fastest 1,500 in the world just weeks earlier, but she weighed 104 pounds. She was not built for the Olympic format of three rounds. She was a gazelle, not a workhorse.

Still, Favor Hamilton fought her way to the front of the pack not once but twice, using the last bit of strength in her body.

For Dan. Hold on.

Two hundred meters. Fear crushed the wind from her lungs. She was hyperventilating now, gasping for air. Thirty seconds. Her legs turned to rubber, then to lead. She broke form, looked almost spastic, like she was swimming for the finish line, now 125 meters away.

Panic gripped her. She was not going to win the race. Runners started passing her. One, two, then five. The disappointment, no, the shame, was more than she could bear.

"There was nothing positive going through my brain," Favor Hamilton says, 12 years later. "Coming around that (last) corner the anxiety gripped me so bad. It told my brain, 'Just fall. That's the easiest solution. Just fall, and this all will go away.' That was the only way out."

So she took a dive, tumbling to the track in a heap.

"I remember it so clearly," Favor Hamilton says. "I remember falling. I remember my cheek hitting the track. I remember the thoughts that I was telling myself. It was completely negative: 'You are an idiot. Everybody is staring at you right now. Look at what you did.' Just being so cruel to myself."

After several seconds, she got up and jogged the last 80 meters, then intentionally collapsed again. Medical personnel rushed to her side. American Marla Runyon, who finished sixth, doubled back to check on her friend. Favor Hamilton's eyes were closed. Runyon patted her legs.

"I talked to her," Runyon would say, "but she didn't answer any of my questions."

The questions would not be answered for a long time.

The 2012 Olympic Games are days away, and Suzy Favor Hamilton, who will turn 44 on Aug. 8 - two days before the women's 1,500-meter final in London - is still running.

She puts in three to five miles a day, five days a week. It's a far cry from the mileage she logged as an elite athlete.

"I am so much happier now with my running," she says. "I run to stay fit. I'm running for me now, whereas before I was running for my university or my sponsor or my country. Now when I run, it's totally for my enjoyment."

Even when she's not wearing running shoes, Favor Hamilton is constantly on the go. She has a 6-year-old daughter, Kylie, works as a real estate agent in the Madison area and gives about 60 motivational speeches a year.

In those speeches, she touches on her phenomenal running career, which included 11 state titles at Stevens Point High School, 23 Big Ten and nine NCAA titles at the University of Wisconsin and seven U.S. championships as a professional.

Favor Hamilton was selected as one of the 100 High School Athletes of the Century by Scholastic Sports Magazine. The Big Ten award for female athlete of the year, which she won three times, now is named for her.

"The longevity is something I'm really proud of," Favor Hamilton says. "Making three Olympic teams, I'm very, very proud of that."

But her achievements on the track do not compare with her greatest triumph: facing and overcoming the "demons" she battled off and on through her running career. They took on many forms: anxiety, pangs of self-doubt, an eating disorder and, eventually, depression.

"After I had Kylie, I developed postpartum depression, which I feel was always there in me," she says. "The running was just covering it up."

From the outside, Favor Hamilton appeared to have it all. She had cover girl looks and modeling jobs, lucrative sponsor contracts, a loving husband and a high-profile track career. True enough, but it all came with a price.

"Your whole life, you're told how great you are, from your coaches to your friends to your parents' friends," she says. "I had to be the perfect child, in my mind. It wasn't anybody's fault. I never blame anybody. It's just the way society is.


She knew from an early age that her success as a runner made other people happy. A self-described "pleaser and perfectionist," she liked how that made her feel. But the flip side was the pressure of expectations.

"There were those demons in your brain telling you you're not good enough, you're not fast enough, you need to be better," she says. "The pressure to win was great."

As a senior in high school, Favor Hamilton went into the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships ranked No. 1 in the nation but finished second.

"The girl who beat me was severely anorexic," she says. "I thought, 'I guess I need to look like her.' "

She basically stopped eating and struggled with an eating disorder into her freshman year at UW. Finally, Mark Hamilton, then her boyfriend, issued an ultimatum: Either you start eating healthy or I'm out of here.

"I got so mad," Favor Hamilton says. "Everyone else always supported me and kissed my butt. I thought, 'Who is this guy being a jerk?' He knew what was best for me, even though I didn't want to hear it."

She went on to a stellar collegiate career and as a professional ran five of the nine fastest 1,500 meters by an American ever. Yet she failed to medal at the World Championships and came up empty at the 1992 and '96 Olympics.

Her critics called her a choker. They said she cleaned up in domestic races but froze on the international stage.

"They were wrong," she says. "I loved competition. I loved the big events and the crowds and the attention, and I still do. That wasn't the case. It was the rounds. Having to run three rounds in five days was impossible on my body without any type of drug enhancement."

Still, as the 2000 Olympics neared, she was focused on winning gold to honor the memory of Dan Favor, a manic-depressive who had stopped taking his medications and jumped off an eight-story building. She wanted to win for Dan, but also for a close friend who was dying of cancer and for her husband, an attorney who had put his career on hold for her.

Who could carry that kind of weight?

"I wanted that gold so bad," she says. "I thought that was the only way to true happiness in my life. It was unbelievable how I let my brain get so out of perspective."

For years after her "crash and burn" in Sydney, Favor Hamilton was in denial.

"I was never going to tell anybody I fell on purpose," she says. "The media made up excuses for me. I went along with what they came up with."

It was only after years of therapy that she was able to admit the truth publicly about Sydney and her battle with depression. She talks openly now about those subjects in her motivational speeches. Occasionally, after she's finished, someone will approach her in tears, asking how to get help.

"It may sound silly but everyone wants to make a difference," she says. "I always thought being an Olympic gold medalist would make a difference. This is making a difference, and I know it's helping other people to speak up."

Favor Hamilton takes the antidepressant Zoloft and says she probably will be on the medication for the rest of her life.

"I feel better than I've ever felt," she says. "I know this medication would have helped me as a child with my anxiety. I don't know how it would have affected my drive as an athlete. I just know I'm happier than I've ever been. My life just keeps getting better."

In addition to her work as a real estate agent and motivational speaker, Favor Hamilton represents Disney World and the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon Series.

Disney puts on a series of triathlons and road races at its theme parks and between those races and the Rock 'n' Roll races, she runs nine half-marathons a year - very much in a noncompetitive mode.

"I'm not out there to break records or win the race," she says. "I don't care what place I come in. I'm running eight-minute miles, which is almost twice as slow as I used to run. And I don't care.

"If somebody is going to pass me, go for it. And I'll cheer you on."

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