Two-time Olympian Tessa Worley, France’s best hope for a medal in women’s alpine skiing, is ready for this year’s Winter Games in China despite the uncertainty that surrounds the new course in Xiaohaituo.

Normally, there is at least one event held at newly constructed alpine venues before the Olympic events officially begin. The trial runs are beneficial for both the athletes and the race organizers and officiating teams, but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its associated travel restrictions precluded such a possibility. That’s why the 32-year-old champion is preparing for big races as she always does, adhering to a recipe that’s enabled her to compete at the summit of her sport and inspire others.

“I’m looking forward to being really relaxed about it, trying to be able to not be disturbed by everything new that’s going to come to us,” Worley says. “There’s a lot of stuff that’s unknown.”

For more than 15 years, Worley has carved out a career as one of the world’s elite alpine racers. A member of the French national team since 2005, she had her first elite-level giant slalom victory at age 19, when she clocked 2:12.86 at the November 2008 International Ski Federation (FIS) World Cup in Aspen, Colo.

Since then, she’s proved her mettle year after year, notably in her best event: giant slalom. Worley is a two-time GS world champion (2013, 2017), and in 2017 won the FIS World Cup GS season title, edging out American Mikaela Shiffrin (second place) and Italian Sofia Goggia (third place) for the crown. Worley has yet to add an Olympic medal to her collection, but that doesn’t take away from her greatness, according to French Olympic alpine skiing medalist and Eurosport expert Flo Masnada.

“To be on the podium where she wins every year, that’s a giant,” Masnada said of Worley. “The French often have the reputation of having good skiers, but it isn’t enough to win lap times or to go fast. What makes the difference at the highest level is the mental aspect. You must go for the extremes, you must push yourself, you must want it a little more than the others. That’s what makes the difference.”

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Worley’s recipe for success, while founded on exceptional physical and technical skills, is also heavily predicated on mental outlook and resiliency.

“It’s about believing in yourself,” Worley said. “That’s not always easy, especially if you’re not as physically prepared. But when I have difficulties, it makes me hungrier to get better and try to perform. This is something that motivates me.”

Part of Worley’s motivation stems from the fact that skiing runs through her veins. Born Oct. 4, 1989 in the eastern French city of Annemasse, which hugs the Swiss border, Worley spent the bulk of her early childhood halfway around the world, first in her father’s native Australia, and then New Zealand, where her parents were ski instructors. Having been on skis since she was a toddler, Worley competed in her first race as a 5-year old at Mt. Lyford. But by the late 1990s, the family relocated back to her mother’s homeland, where Worley has since been based at Le Grand Bornand.

She credits her mixed cultural heritage and upbringing in New Zealand with helping to fine-tune her competitive spirit.

“I have this little part of me that’s Australia, that’s New Zealand, and from France, of course,” she says of the Anglo-Saxon cultural outlook toward playing sports, which is ingrained as a serious endeavor in Australian, New Zealand, American, Canadian and British societies more so than in their French counterpart. “I’ve experienced great things in sport trying to perform. I think I’m lucky to have a bit of both spirits.”

Masnada, a bronze medalist at the 1992 and 1998 Olympics, notes how important Worley’s multi-cultural background is for her career. “It is reflected in her skiing, in her mentality,” Masnada says. “She is in the moment [when she races], it’s very intense, she’s really into it. I think that’s one of the explanations.”

If Worley looks wildly intense during the race, she is actually enjoying the run, confident in her preparations and letting her skis go downhill and between the gates. In France, there can be an overwhelming pressure to obtain results, and this can take away the pleasure while negatively impacting results. Worley has learned to look beyond it.

“It’s more about enjoying yourself and not all about the results,” she says. “Sometimes you’re not able to perform at the best level because of the pressure.”

That mentality has served Worley well in the past few years, both when pushing through the COVID-19 season last year and coming back from injury. Halfway through the 2019-20 season, Worley had surgery on her right knee and missed a month of racing. She returned to the FIS circuit in mid-February 2020, notching two competitions before bad weather and the pandemic truncated the season.

But it was years earlier that a separate knee injury set Worley on a new course. A crash in December 2013 and subsequent surgery sidelined the star and prevented her from trying to convert a world championship title into an Olympic medal at Sochi in 2014. “I had a difficult time coming back after my first really big injury,” Worley says.

The physical recovery was the easier part. Worley understood that her body needed six-to-seven months to regain its elite-level functionality. The mental aspect, however, was much more difficult. It took her nearly two years to get back into peak mental form. “Once I got past this, I think I got better. I got stronger,” she says.

Indeed, three years after the big injury, she won another title, showing that it isn’t just Worley’s tenacity that sets her apart — it’s also her dedication to chasing perfection and fine-tuning the little details that give her an edge.

“I like to perfect my technical abilities,” Worley says. “I like to train and repeat and try to find the perfect line or the perfect turn around the gates. I prefer being between the gates and trying to go as fast as I can to freeskiing.”

“[Tessa] is an example in her way of preparing for races, that she leaves nothing to chance,” Masnada says. “She will push the team.”

For Olympic teammate Romane Miradoli, Worley provides a model to emulate. “She is not satisfied and is always super motivated, always chasing perfection, even if we know it doesn’t exist,” Miradoli says. “She never balks.”

After all, having a teammate who can help you better understand how to reach and sustain a career at the summit is a tremendous advantage. “It’s a real plus and a real chance,” Miradoli says.

Worley heads into the Beijing Games clocking some of her best times (and as one of Team France’s flag bearers). She won the World Cup giant slalom race in Lienz, Austria on Dec. 28 with a time of 2:03.88 over two runs. It was her first victory since last January at Kronplatz, Italy (2:11.38), and both results were Worley’s first World Cup victories since 2018. Most recently, she snagged second place at Kranjska Gora, Slovenia (2:16.75) on Jan. 8, and third place at Kronplatz on Jan. 25 with a time of 2:04.15.

Worley has also elevated her Super-G performances this year, finishing fifth and sixth in the Jan. 16 (1:11.35) and Jan. 23 (1:21.52) FIS World Cup races, respectively. The last time she topped a Super-G podium was in December 2019 at the St Moritz European Cup, with a time of 1:20.82. Yet, it’s the giant slalom that gives Worley her best chance of medaling at the 2022 Games.

“I’m at a period of my career where, if I go to the Olympics, I just really want to enjoy the moment,” Worley says. “I really want to win.”

Lindsay Sarah Krasnoff is a global sports writer and contributor at Just Women’s Sports. Historian and author of “The Making of Les Bleus: Sport in France, 1958-2010,” she lectures and teaches sports diplomacy classes and contributes to various outlets. Follow her on Twitter @Lempika7.

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony on Friday afternoon. 

The Team USA standout is the most decorated women’s swimmer in the sport’s history. In addition to her seven Olympic golds, she’s also won a total of 21 gold medals at the World Championships, the most of any swimmer regardless of gender. 

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The esteemed award recognizes those who have "made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," according to a White House press briefing. 

Ledecky is one of 19 medal recipients chosen by the Biden administration this year. She joins a class that spans the worlds of politics, sports, film, human rights, religion, and science. Her fellow 2024 awardees include Everything Everywhere All at Once actress Michelle Yeoh, pioneering Hispanic astronaut Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, plus posthumous winners Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the US, and assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 

"I'm surrounded by so many extraordinary people in so many different fields," Ledecky told Just Women's Sports on Friday. "I feel like I've made a lot of friends today among that group, and their families and their friends."

Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and USWNT legend Megan Rapinoe were among 2022’s class of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. Biles and Rapinoe were the fifth and sixth women athletes to be given the honor, making Ledecky the seventh.

Ledecky said she was surprised to learn how recent it has been that athletes in women's sports have been considered for the honor. Billie Jean King was the first to receive the award in 2009. "That kind of blew my mind that it was that recent," she said.

"There are so many great female athletes that I've looked up to for so many years," she continued. "And I know we're just going to keep pushing ahead, and doing our best to continue to get a seat at every table."

Like Biles, Ledecky receives the Medal of Freedom while she's still actively competing in her sport, a fact not lost on the 27-year-old. "My goals in the pool are to continue to push forward and swim good times, hopefully win some more medals. And then secondly to continue to do good things out of the pool, whether that's inspiring young kids to learn how to swim, get into the sport, set big goals in whatever pursuits they're interested in."

"I've recognized I've had a long career now, and it's important to reflect every now and then. But at the same time, I'm still competing and still working hard into the future."

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

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In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.