Maggie Malone US Javelin Project

(listen to Maggie’s full audio below)

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Ok, looking at this photo, um, it honestly makes me laugh. There are so many emotions I feel looking at this and it feels like a dream. It happened so long ago that I forgot what it felt like.

I want to look at her dead in her eyes and say “Girrll, you have no idea what this future is going to hold and you have no idea what this track world looks like”

At this time, I had just won my first Olympic Trials, I had become and Olympian. I have been throwing the javelin for four years-ish, and I had just competed in my first not only Olympic Trials, but USA Championships ever. So I had no idea what the track world was, I didn’t understand the community that came with that, the family that came with that.

And it’s just funny to me like I can look at her and see such naivety, such innocence in it. But I feel incredibly proud, and at this moment just seeing the stars and stripes wrapped around me makes me feel proud makes me feel just blessed to have been on that path that God sent me on and just knowing the hard work that got put into season really drives me for the future too.

Like I said I  didn’t know what the future held. I didn’t know that I would go through a lone of injuries in the next few years. A lot of mental injuries too that came with the sport. At this time, I just see this girl and I’m like “she’s so raw, she’s just doing her thing and so proud.” Like 

Knowing what happened after this, seeing my family, getting to go back to my hometown, getting to go to Rio. It just brings a huge smile to my face and joy to my heart honestly. 

I guess it all files into where we are now which is training obviously in quarantine now that it’s 2020, and finally being the healthy or healthiest that I’ve been. 

Working with the USA Javelin project that I created with my new coach Tom Puxtest and just going for this 2021 goal and trying to be better than the girl I see here in the picture. So thats where we’re at now. And knowing what it took to get that girl to win the Olympic Trials and now I feel like I’m working even harder than she did at just understanding my sport and understating the pressures and handling those pressures psychologically and also physically but also knowing that I have a community behind me that I’m a part of thats a cumulation to get to that point.

So I’m hoping 2021 Olympic Trials I’m able to stand in front of that camera again with the stars and stripes wrapped around which would be a really cool recreation and I dunno just a blessing to stand there and see what had happened from 2016 to 2021 and knowing that that innocent naive girl has just transformed into who I am today but being just as proud of both selves in that. 

Thats where we are now… yea, just looking at it continuing to smile through it all.