When Coco Gauff caught COVID days before she was supposed to leave to compete in the Tokyo Olympics she was understandably upset. For maybe 24 hours.
Then the 20-year-old, a bright young star whose age belies her maturity, saw the big picture.
“(Competing) in the Olympics has always been up there with winning a Grand Slam, like top goals,” Gauff told USA TODAY Sports this summer. “But bigger issues were going on than me missing (the Olympics). It’s a great event, but people were dying.”
Delaying her Olympic dream didn’t mean it would be denied altogether, Gauff thought. Paris would still be there in three years.
Gauff, who won the 2023 U.S., open and advanced to the fourth round of Wimbledon, where she was upset by fellow American Olympian Emma Navarro representing one of the Americans with a chance to medal in both singles and doubles tennis. Gauff will be joined in Paris by fellow Americans Jessica Pegula (her doubles partner), Danielle Collins, and Navarro.
Tennis Olympic spots are determined by rankings, not do-or-die competitions like swimming or track trials. So when Gauff qualified for the 2024 Paris Games, she wasn’t surprised. Still, she got “super excited” when she received her official nomination letter, calling it “an honor” to represent her country during a competition seemingly everyone tunes into.
There are other benefits to the fact that Gauff had to wait three years before making her Olympic debut. She has two Grand Slam titles under her belt now — besides the 2023 U.S. Open, Gauff and doubles partner Katerina Siniakova won the 2024 French Open in May — and tons of big-match experience. That has helped her better understand how to juggle so many expectations. She’s not afraid now to speak up and tell coaches she needs a lighter workout, or a day off if she’s mentally or physically drained.
“I learned in the past that they always tell you to go on the day you want to, and that’s true,” she said days before Wimbledon started. “But also, it’s important to listen to yourself because it does catch up to you. These tournaments are so intense.”
Gauff is especially excited to play on the Olympics stage at a time when investment and engagement in women’s sports is booming, a trend she attributes at least partially to the exponential growth of women’s basketball, which she said is “beneficial for all of us.” She thinks fans have valued women’s sports as a whole for a while, but big businesses getting on board in the last few years has made a difference.
“I think a lot of it just comes from people, not fans per se but companies and networks investing in (us) more because they realize finally — there are storylines, heroes, villains,” she said. “That’s just sports, men and women. There’s always going to be a team that people love and a team that people hate.”
Gauff is one of the highest-paid athletes in the world and hopes that soon, more female athletes join her on that list. She emphasized that women athletes have been deserving of increased coverage and investment for years, arguing that there are “more sides to women than maybe some of the men,” a nod to her and other female athletes’ interests outside of their sport, which gives them cross-cultural appeal.
The next step for women’s sports to take, she said, involves increased visibility. This matters to her not just as an athlete but as a viewer.
“I think the next big thing will be getting as many games as possible on TV, on prime networks, during prime time,” Gauff said, adding that this surge in women’s sports popularity could help sports like women’s soccer and hoops get the same type of visibility as women’s tennis, which benefits from playing at the same time and place as men’s tennis.
