At nine, my mom used to tell me she saw an Olympic medalist in me. I used to take it as a joke, but she was very serious.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I kind of always took it for granted the fact that my parents were Olympic medalists.
In my very first interview, at nine years old, I said I wanted to be an Olympic gold medalist. That was the first time I said it out loud in front of somebody other than my parents.
As a child I was very involved with sports and I knew at age 9 that I wanted to be an Olympic champion.
My stepdad is Bruce Jenner, the Olympian. The first time he came over was like a blind date, and we had show and tell. He took out the gold medal for me and my sisters, and we were like, 'So? Who the hell are you?'
I was a crazy little seven-year-old. I used to get up an hour early to watch the big kids train. I thought, 'I must absorb their awesomeness.' That was my goal from when I was seven. I told my coach, 'I'm going to the Olympics.'
When I was six, right before I started swimming, we went to a national competition here in Maryland and watched Michael Phelps swim, and I got to meet him afterwards, and I got his autograph. Fast forward nine years, and I'm at the Olympics with him, and it's like: 'Woah.'
I won my first medal when I was nine years old. It was at the Boston Open.
I was just a normal athlete. My mother tried to spark something in me. She was an athlete in high school before she got pregnant with my older brother. She was 16, and that was it for her when it came to track and her education.
My senior year of high school, when I was getting recruited for college, my dad goes to me, 'You can become an Olympic champion.' And that's the first time that I'd heard someone else say that to me. I was like, 'Uh, are you talking to me?'
I wasn't expecting two seconds of me on the medal stand to go viral after the Olympics. I came back to my room after the medal ceremony, and my dad said this picture of me doing a face I don't even remember making is blowing up.
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