In 2000, Suzy Favor posted the fastest women’s 1500 meter time in the world. The New York Times picked her as the “favorite for the gold medal” for the summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia.
Combine her speed with her fashion model good looks, Favor stood on the brink of super stardom. With a gold medal in Sydney, she seemed destined to become an Olympic household name right up there with Mary Lou Retton, Picabo Street and 2008 beach volleyball gold medalists Misty May and Kerri Walsh.
But that future, Suzy Favor’s future, changed in a split second.
Titles were nothing new to Favor. Still in high school, Scholastic Sports Magazine named her one of the top 100 high school athletes of the 20th Century. Running Times Magazine calls her “a heroine of American track.” Running for the University of Wisconsin Suzy Favor won an astonishing 23 Big Ten titles, 9 NCAA titles, 14 All-America awards on her way to winning more events than any female college athlete ever—in any sport. After college, she ran her way to the USA Outdoor distance title 4 times, the USA Indoor title 3 times, and ran in 3 Olympics.
Crazy money followed. Advertisers discovered she could turn heads faster than she could run and companies including Nike, Reebok, Pert Plus Shampoo, Nordic Track, Clairol, Oakley and Kikkoman Foods signed Suzy to endorsement deals. The faster she ran, the faster the endorsements rolled in.
Sydney would be Favor’s third Olympics. For many reasons, she had yet to medal in her previous two attempts in Barcelona and Atlanta. Perhaps she peaked too soon – or ran injured – whatever the reason, an Olympic medal was the only major award missing from her large trophy case.
She took her position at the start. The race started slow but by 800 meters Favor took the lead. At 200 meters she could see the finish line.
She imaged herself standing on the podium watching the Stars and Stripes rise above the stadium. She could hear the national anthem as she accepted the gold medal with her family and friends looking on.
Then she did what distance runners dread.
She hit the wall.
“I hit empty on my gas tank,” Hamilton told documentary director Dan Smith. “I panicked. Then, a runner passed me and I thought ‘silver isn’t so bad.’ Then another runner passed me and I thought, ‘hey, a bronze is still quite an achievement. I can live with a bronze’. But when the third runner passed me I decided fourth place was not good enough and I somehow needed to vanish. But where do you hide when the whole world is watching?”
She thought of her best friend—dying of cancer and watching the race in the stadium. She thought of her brother who committed suicide the year before and how winning might help her family heal.
She felt she was letting everyone down.
So she fell—on purpose.
To her it seemed to be the only choice. But why would someone end an amazing career by choice?
But was it really her choice or something much deeper?
Experts blamed her collapse on an injury, dehydration or a panic attack. Eight years passed before she admitted publically on an internet talk show that she fell deliberately. Her announcement came just a month after she told her husband, Mark, of more than 15 years.
Now, she wants everyone to know.
She kept her secret from everyone except a therapist who helped her understand what had happened. She talked how she ran virtually every day since the fifth grade—how her mother, fearing this budding track star would burn out, wanted her to take a day off but she never did—how she remembered feeling sad and how she felt after the run.
“I felt great.”
Today Favor understands what happened in those few seconds of panic in Sydney as her medal hopes vanished.
Today, with the help of her therapist, Favor understands that she suffers from depression and has since childhood. Running became her drug of choice.
It was depression that caused her brother to finish a cup of coffee, climb to the roof of a building and jump off. He had recently told her the medications he took for his depression just didn’t sit well with him so he stopped taking them.
Today, like her competitors in track, Favor is beating depression and she wants anyone who will listen to know about it.
Today, the now Suzy Favor Hamilton says she’s in phase two of her life. She and her husband, Mark Hamilton, have a real estate business and chase their daughter Kiley around their backyard. She fronts local charities. She conducts a running camp for young women where everyone wears pink and learns much more about life than running. She’s working with Nike to start a running club. She, along with Olympian Casey FitzRandolph, conduct wellness programs for schools and businesses. She travels the country as a motivational speaker and tells her audience how she reached the top of the running world, fell down and how it took her eight years to get back up again.
More than a sports story Run from Darkness: The Suzy Favor Story examines the pressures world class athletes face physically, mentally and emotionally. Through archival footage, we’ll follow Favor’s record-setting career. We’ll hear from Favor about the pressures of performing at the top and why she kept her secret from everyone. We’ll hear from her family, coaches and fellow athletes about this remarkable woman and her remarkable journey back from the depths of depression.
© 2009 Triangle Media Works, LLC