The Warm Up Track 2025: Thea LaFond – Dominica’s first Olympic champion

Dominica’s Thea LaFond had a golden 2024. She was one of a handful of athletes who won the World Indoors in March, and then followed it up with an Olympic title at the Games in Paris.

That night, the entire population of her native Dominica could have fitted inside the Stade de France. Her gold at the Games was the island nation’s first of any colour in any Olympic sport, just as her World Indoor title was their first medal of any colour at those Championships.

Having moved to the United States at the age of five, Thea describes how hard it was to adapt to a different kind of life. Dance, and later track and field, helped her with that transition. She remembers trying the Triple Jump for the first time, taking off and doing three ballet-style leaps with straight legs before the coach told her that wasn’t the way to do it!

Thea has remained a child of both countries, and is rightly proud of everything she’s achieved wearing the vest of Dominica. She was their only representative at the Glasgow World Indoor Championships, and then part of a team of just four athletes in Paris.

Thea explains how she had the best season of her life just as she was turning thirty, and how the death of her friend and inspiration, Dr Carissa F. Etienne, the Director of the Pan American Health Organization, was a catalyst for that. Thea jumped all season with a yellow ribbon in her hair to remember her fellow Dominican, and says it gave her ‘an extra pair of wings’.

Thea tells us about those times when she considered giving up the sport. She worked for six years as a teacher, and was a largely self-funded and part-time athlete during that period.

Find out how she won both of 2024’s golds despite carrying a knee injury through the season, and how she won in Glasgow and Paris with personal bests in both finals.

Plus, how Thea’s coach and husband Aaron Gadson’s weather forecasting played a key role on the night of the Olympic final.

Photo: Dominica's athlete and gold medallist Thea Lafond poses with her medal on stage at the Champions Park at Trocadero during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on August 6, 2024, with the Eiffel Tower visible in the background. (Credit: AFP via Getty Images)