The day of the ladies’s foil particular person gold medal bout, Lauren Scruggs spent an hour mendacity down in her room, occupied with what she was about to do and the street to get there.
Going into the 2024 Paris Olympic Video games, the 21-year-old from Queens wasn’t projected to medal, not to mention compete for gold. However bout after bout, Scruggs battled her well past formidable opponents, together with number-one-ranked Arianna Errigo of Italy within the eighth spherical. On Sunday, July 28, Scruggs’s breakthrough run earned her a spot within the last in opposition to American teammate and reigning Olympic champion Lee Kiefer.
Within the quiet moments of last-minute preparation, the first-time Olympian didn’t get slowed down by the stress and excessive stakes. As a substitute, as she tells SELF in a video name from Paris, she felt pleasure.
“Clearly I’d identified we’d made historical past being the primary two Individuals on a podium like that, so I wished to go on the market and have enjoyable and benefit from the full setting of being within the Grand Palais and fencing in entrance of America and the world,” Scruggs says.
Later that day inside the enduring 124-year-old fencing venue, Scruggs earned a silver medal to Kiefer, who received 15-6. That made Scruggs the primary Black American lady to earn a person Olympic fencing medal. 4 days later, the rising senior at Harvard saved the momentum going by serving to the US clinch the gold medal within the ladies’s fencing group foil competitors—the group’s first-ever gold within the occasion. Based on OutSports, Scruggs’s {hardware} added to the present LGBTQ+ medal rely of 24 to date in Paris.
A couple of days after the match, Scruggs says she was nonetheless in a little bit of shock. Within the span of per week, she rode the Workforce USA boat into her first Opening Ceremonies, skilled surreal moments in Paris (together with an introduction with Snoop Canine), and made historical past within the sport whereas representing her nation. Trying again on all of it, Scruggs believes a low-pressure method, gratitude, and satisfaction—she entered the match already joyful along with her efficiency within the months main as much as the Video games—helped her excel in methods she didn’t think about.
“I did not have any stress of ‘Oh, I want to do that or that,’ I simply wished to have enjoyable and benefit from the expertise,” she says. “The Olympics are inclined to reward people who find themselves fighters. Each match, I used to be making an attempt to combat, put all of my power into each bout, and I believe that’s what gave me the sting. I wasn’t nervous about technical issues. It was the power I used to be placing on the market.”
For Scruggs, a lot of her life had been constructing as much as this groundbreaking second. She received her begin within the sport on the age of seven. Impressed by her brother, Nolen, who picked up fencing after watching Star Wars, she shortly emerged as a worldwide standout. In 2019, she grew to become the youngest US foil fencer to win the Junior World Fencing Championships. Final yr, she received the NCAA title for the Crimson.