Olympian hopes to inspire local athletes

“Focus on the opportunities, not the obstacles”

So says United States Olympian Lauryn Williams.

Williams, 35, a multiple Olympic and World Championship medal-holder, is currently in TT, the birthplace of her father, to assist the TT Olympic Committee (TTOC) in creating career services for its athletes.

“We all know that there are obstacles in life, there are barriers that we would come up against but there is always an opportunity in the midst of an obstacle. There are opportunities as long as you think outside the box.

“I was not planning on actually becoming an athlete. I realised when these letters started to come in the mail there was an opportunity for me to get a free education.

"We’re five girls and two boys, so there just wasn’t a lot of money to go around, so I needed to have some other strategy in place in order to get my education,” she said.

She was speaking to reporters during a press conference on Tuesday at the Buccoo Integrated Facility hosted by the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Division of Sport and Youth Affairs.

This is Williams’ second visit to the country, although she has Charlotteville parentage.

She is hoping to inspire local athletes to continue pushing towards being professional athletes.

“I’ve been accepted here… I’ve been excited about the way in which everyone has welcomed me to Tobago, and everyone seems excited for me to embrace this side of my culture and my roots and see in what ways I can give back… so I’m really, really excited.

“I’ll love to be able to be on a programme where I am here on a much more regular basis because I think that for the athletes of TT to not just survive but to thrive, the thing that is going to be key is the investment of time. We definitely need the investment of resources in the form of monetary resources, but the investment of time is important."

So too, she said, were "people who have the right information to share that with them so that they are better able to reach their full potential.

"After a 12-year career, there’s lots of information, and I tried to get it all in one place by writing the book, but in addition to that, showing up and investing time and talking to the athletes, understanding what it is their needs are and being able to share the wisdom that I have is going to be a really key part in helping them get to the next level and achieve the ten goals by 2024.”

Whilst in TT, Williams is also using the opportunity to promote her book, The Oval Office: A Four-Time Olympian’s Guide to Professional Track and Field. It is a how-to for athletes focusing on things such as choosing an agent or coach, building their brand, understanding sponsorships and contracts and optimising earnings and savings.

“The book has multiple chapters, and one of the things I definitely like about the book is that you don’t have to read it in a linear fashion. You can just go and start with whatever chapter you’re most interested in…There is a chapter on nutrition and supplements and doping – and so one of the things I’m really proud of during my career is that I didn’t use any supplements. I think that with proper nutrition, you’re better to be able to set yourself up for good performance than you are if you take some pills from a lab or some powder in a package… I don’t believe in those sort of things.”

At her company, Worth Winning, Williams helps young professionals in their 20s and 30s to make sound financial choices. Half of her client base, which spans 25 states, is made up of Olympic and professional athletes. She caters to a younger clientele for a couple of reasons, one of which is that she feels she didn’t get the proper guidance from her financial advisers as a young athlete earning money through endorsements and sponsorships.

“The reason why this book was absolutely necessary is that I kept bumping into too many people that didn’t make good decisions, but it was because they didn’t have good information to make good decisions. They just needed someone to tell them.

"So this is my way of sharing…Thousands of people can get this book and get on the right track and they’ll know the signs and the signals, the red flags to look for when working with someone else and getting themselves prepared.”

She said at present she has no plans to write another book.

“This was a huge undertaking for me... I’m not a natural writer, I’m more of a numbers person. But what I would like to do is to start pairing up with other athletes.

“This book is specific to track and field, but there are a lot of topics that go across the various sports. I'd love to match up with a boxer or a hockey player and take the book as a framework and then start to focus and specialise in that area… what are the things that are different about getting a agent in hockey or getting an agent in boxing, the different things that are intricate to one specific sport but using this as a framework. Maybe more editions of this book. But we’ll see what happens,” she said.

Now living in Dallas with husband, Williams will be back in the US next weekend for inductions into the Penn Relays Wall of Fame and the Beaver County Hall of Fame.