For most people, getting pulled for a bag check while going through customs is a hassle. It’s been a long day of travel, and cranky fliers just want to get home.
When Claire Bryant’s backpack was pulled for further inspection at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport last week, she wasn’t annoyed. She knew exactly what they were looking for.
“Yep, that’s what it is,” said the customs agent. “Is it gold?”
The item that stood out on the X-ray machine was the gold medal Bryant had won over the weekend at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing, China. In her first post-collegiate season and on her first senior national team, the 23-year-old from Houston soared 6.96 meters to emerge victorious against some of the best long jumpers in the world.
It was her first global championship and the biggest meet of Bryant’s career. She had more eyes on her than ever before, but opted to approach the championship with a mindset of gratitude, not one of expectations or fear.
“If you’re given the opportunity or have taken the opportunity, you can also take the gold,” Bryant said. “That was my mental preparation. ‘This is so cool, take the opportunity, enjoy every blessing.’”
Becoming a champion
Nanjing is a long way from Gainesville, where Bryant still lives and trains after having concluded her collegiate career with Florida in June. The 30 hours of travel it took to get to the site of the World Championships, in conjunction with a drastic time change, can be taxing on the body of an elite athlete. Bryant arrived in China well before the meet started to combat these ill effects. By the time the women’s long jump competition got underway on the meet’s final day, she had been in Nanjing for six days.
“I woke up before my alarm. I was so ready for it,” Bryant said. “It really did feel like I was waking up for Christmas morning… I was just ready to go.”
Bryant’s excitement heading into the competition was nearly stifled before she even began jumping. There were Chinese cultural immersion activities available to the athletes in their hotel throughout the week, and among these was a woman who was writing signs in Chinese calligraphy. Bryant, a Christian, asked her to write “Jesus” in Mandarin, and she planned to hold up the sign when she was introduced in the competition later in the day.
Before her first jump, a World Athletics representative informed Bryant that religious symbols are barred from being displayed in competition, and she would potentially be disqualified. Even with this looming over her head, she jumped better than she ever had. Her first jump measured out to 6.76 meters, her best mark of the season, and her third-round jump was 6.90 meters, a new personal best.
“For the first three rounds, I do have the thought of, ‘This might not even matter what you’re jumping, because you may just have to pack your bags,’” Bryant said. “But I just said, ‘God will figure that out for me, I’ll jump and he can do everything else.’”
After the third round, Bryant was told she would only be awarded a yellow card, meaning she would not be disqualified from the competition she was leading by 18 centimeters.
Now jumping without the burden of a disqualification, Bryant once again found freedom on the runway, something she had honed in on in the weeks leading up to the competition. She started a slow, rhythmic clap to get the crowd involved, and then tore down the runway at a pace not many jumpers can match.
When she hit the sand about seven seconds later, she had leaped 6.96 meters, once again resetting her personal best and sealing the win for good.
“This year, we’ve been talking a ton about being really, really aggressive with how you run through the board,” her coach, Nic Petersen, said. “That’s the first time I’ve seen her absolutely sell out and go for it.”
The immediate emotions of debuting on top of the world podium were amplified by the contrast between the moment and Bryant’s collegiate career.
In her four years as a Gator, Bryant qualified for each NCAA Indoor and Outdoor Championship, claiming first-team All-American honors at all eight. However, she never managed to come out on top, securing three runner-up finishes. The consistency and durability needed to become an eight-time All-American in a single event is more than commendable and something Petersen recognizes as one of Bryant’s biggest strengths. Nevertheless, she admitted that never having the title of national champion was “heartbreaking.”
Now almost a year removed from her final collegiate competition and having etched her name in the global history books, Bryant has acknowledged a necessary shift in perspective that afforded her this opportunity.
“The first emotion was, ‘This is embarrassing,’ that I wasn’t a national champion, and I wanted it so bad to validate my level or how good I was,” she said. “I needed a gold medal in college, and then in the professional field I just wanted it. I didn’t need it to understand who I am, so I think that’s why it happened so quickly.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same
The transition from NCAA to post-collegiate competition is jarring for any athlete. Bryant and many other Florida track and field legends have mitigated the impact of this adjustment by staying in Gainesville. Bryant still practices on the same runway she has for the last four years, still works with the same coaches, still lifts in the same weight room and still trains with the same teammates.
“Going into the pro life,” Bryant said, “I was like, ‘Can I do this?’ Coach Petersen told me, ‘If you’re asking that question, then you need to reevaluate how you think about yourself because you do belong and I can’t make you believe that.”
As part of the transition out of the collegiate system, Bryant and Petersen identified two key areas she could improve, which they hammered away at all offseason: learning “how to compete” and becoming more dedicated in the weight room.
Petersen said that throughout Bryant’s career at Florida, she would get caught up emulating her competitors in the heat of the moment and lose what made her who she was.
“She tried to be people she wasn’t going to be,” Petersen said. “What she finally did at this track meet is she was Claire Bryant, 100%... She has really kind of latched onto that this year and learning how to be freer.”
Bryant has always been fueled by her intense sense of competitiveness. Jesse Millson, Bryant’s teammate during her freshman year and a volunteer assistant coach at Florida for the following three years, recalled the almost-maddening levels of competition she brought to casual party games like Catchphrase. A piece of the puzzle to learning how to compete at the professional level was combining her innate drive and will to win at anything with her uncanny ability to remain composed in tense situations.
“It’s that blend of finding how to be competitive in those settings, but also not to have this immense amount of pressure on yourself,” Millson said.
Bryant’s focus on building strength helped propel her from a podium finisher in the NCAA to a podium-topper on the world stage was a focus on building strength. Realizing that she was far from her ceiling in the weight room, Bryant worked with Florida strength and conditioning coordinator Matt DeLancey to build a training plan tailored to her needs. This included an emphasis on trap bar lifts, where Bryant noticed an immediate impact.
“That wasn’t something we did a lot in college,” Bryant said, “and I knew immediately that was a benefit because we were hitting muscle groups that weren’t being hit as much in college. I would say the weight room was a great addition.”
The realities of competing unsponsored
Shoe contracts are the financial lifeblood of professional track and field. Every day at practice, Bryant works alongside her teammates signed with brands like Nike, Adidas and Puma. But over the summer, she was greeted with the far more common reality for recent graduates of the NCAA system who aspire to keep competing, particularly in the field events.
Bryant won her world title in Nanjing while competing unsponsored. It’s not a new phenomenon, but it may seem entirely foreign to those unfamiliar with the sport’s landscape.
“She’s working, she’s funding her own self,” Petersen said. “I mean, she bet on herself. She’s funding her own way to try and make this dream, and it worked.”
Along with the time commitment it takes to be one of the best long jumpers in the world, Bryant also works as an engagement leader with Athletes in Action, a ministry group angled towards student-athletes. She got involved with the organization while still a student and was offered the opportunity to join the staff over the summer. Even with a gold medal around her neck, she still calls her work with Athletes in Action “the biggest blessing in her life.”
A win like the one Bryant claimed opens countless doors for a young athlete. While Petersen and Bryant’s agent, Paul Doyle, needed to vouch for her to try and gain entries into meets in this upcoming outdoor season, he’s confident that will change now. With “world champion” next to her name, Bryant almost immediately gained access to the Diamond League, the premier professional circuit available to field athletes.
As for any movement on the sponsor side of things since Nanjing, Bryant couldn’t help but smile when asked.
“I’d say I’m very marketable right now.”
An introduction to the world
In the span of six jumps, Bryant went from a relative unknown on the global scene to one of the most entertaining characters in the sport. Her demeanor in the middle of the biggest competition of her life captured the attention of audiences and baffled the commentators, who could not make heads or tails of how she seemed so easygoing.
The simple fact of the matter is, Claire Bryant isn’t like most other athletes. Trying to be like them was holding her back, but now the sport knows she’ll unabashedly be herself each and every time she competes — and the sport better get used to her.
Petersen summed it up best in six simple words: “Welcome to the real Claire Bryant.”
Contact Paul Hof-Mahoney at phof-mahoney@alligator.org. Follow him on X at @phofmahoney
Paul is a junior sports journalism major who is covering the track and field beat in his first semester with the Alligator. In his free time, he enjoys watching commentary Youtube channels and consuming every medium of track and field content imaginable.
