Day 13 - Faster, Higher, Stronger... Happier? Summer Sanders on The New Era of Athletes | The Game Inside the Games

Nastia Liukin (0:00)

Day 13 in Paris. Summer Sanders joins us in studio as we chat about how the games have changed over the years and how athletes handle it differently now.

Michael Gervais (0:10)

Welcome back, or welcome to The Game Inside the Games on Finding Mastery. I'm Dr. Michael Gervais, by trade and training, a high-performance psychologist.

Nastia Liukin (0:18)

And I'm Nastia Liukin, Olympic gold medalist, and we are here in Paris. And in this special series, we unlock the psychology of pivotal, often unseen moments that can make or break an athlete's dream. What's it like to focus a lifetime of experience into one performance, a single moment?

Michael Gervais (0:35)

What goes on inside the minds of the brightest stars while the whole world is watching? Welcome back to Paris, and let's dive into the Game Inside the Games.

Nastia Liukin (0:45)

Welcome back to Paris in the Game Inside the Games, presented by Microsoft Co-Pilot. Joining us now is the incredible Summer Sanders, two-time Olympic gold medalist, commentator, television host, the list goes on. Bringing her insight and wisdom to the Game Inside the Games.

Michael Gervais (0:58)

Summer, we are so excited to have you here.

Summer Sanders (1:01)

Well, you know I'm thrilled. You know, I like sought you out. I wasn't going to wait for you to get in touch with me. I was like, let's talk about this. So I'm thrilled to be here.

Michael Gervais (1:09)

Awesome.

Nastia Liukin (1:09)

We're so excited to have you. So how many Olympics have you been to? Obviously, you compete on the Olympics, but now on the other side of things. So between all of them combined.

Summer Sanders (1:18)

Yeah, I counted them up. It's 13

Nastia Liukin (1:20)

Wow.

Summer Sanders (1:20)

So I was a spectator in 84 That was like the dream maker. My Olympics was 92 And then since then, I've either been working, I was cheering for my husband, eight months pregnant in Torino in 2006 Been working or cheering? And this one is kind of like a work cheer situation. My kids are at that like, awesome. I love the Olympics age, 18 and 16 So I'm trying to soak it up through them. It's been really fun.

Michael Gervais (1:44)

Oh, very cool. What have you seen?

And over the last three decades, what have you noticed? Yeah, that's different now. That's kind of been part of the evolution of sport at the games.

Summer Sanders (1:57)

Well, I mean, since we are talking about mental health, I think the beautiful part about these games is now it is just sort of it's kind of blended in to every every single venue. We're not just looking at the athlete, but we're thinking, what are they going through? We're careful with our words, maybe a little more careful. I think that's been the biggest change. I thought you were going to say, what did you see here? And I was going to talk about your venues. Those volleyball venues are amazing. And this like monster block, monster block. Everybody knows the cheers that you're supposed to do. And so on the mental side of things, I just think that makes the athletes really excited to compete when they have a venue that's going off like that. But yeah, I think that's the biggest change. It's just sort of the conversation.

Everybody's a bit more comfortable being more vulnerable, right? Like shedding a few of those layers to really let people know who they are, which helps if you want to have a social following, which seems to be the way to have a career.

Nastia Liukin (2:59)

And that's, you know, even for me, I didn't have social media. So we talked about it a little bit a few days ago, just when we saw each other. But talk a little bit about how maybe for you, if you would be in this situation now with social media, do you think that would have affected you, changed you?

Summer Sanders (3:15)

So I'm rolling my eyes specifically because I'm so old. Nastia, my Olympic Games, the internet wasn't invented. People did not have cell phones. I mean, the people around us are laughing right now. That's how long ago it was. And also when you look back on it, it was 32 years ago and we didn't have any of this, not even the internet. If you wanted to look where things were, you had to ask someone in Spanish and try to get to the venue from there. So I don't know.

Not racing our time. Time's our rival.

Michael Gervais (3:49)

How did the times travel? Meaning that, you know, not time travel, but how did, I'll tell you what I'm asking, in surfing during those years, we had to wait for like every four months to see for a video drop, a cassette, VHS to drop to see like what people were doing around the planet. And then that was the inspiration. So the inspiration had a lag time. And how fast did times in the pool travel, so that you could be inspired by what somebody else might be doing?