Diana Taurasi Wins a Record Sixth Olympic Gold

Diana Taurasi has become the first basketball player in history to win six Olympic gold medals, after the USA beat hosts France 67-66 in a nail-biting women's final at the Bercy Arena in Paris on Sunday, August 11.

The 42-year-old has won gold at every Games since Athens 2004. Only two other Olympians, German dressage rider Isabell Werth and Hungarian saber fencer Aladár Gerevich, have won at least six golds in the same event, Wikipedia's tournament record notes. It is also the US women's eighth Olympic title in a row.

Taurasi, widely regarded as the greatest women's player of all time, has eaten a plant-based diet since around 2015. She and her wife, former Australian star Penny Taylor, made the change for health reasons, and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine notes she started a vegan diet that year. She has said aging made her think harder about what she eats:

You take for granted what you put in your body when you’re young. You feel like you can do anything. As you get older, you get conscious of what you’re eating and how that affects your body.

She told Women's Fitness, as quoted by Great Vegan Athletes, that cutting out foods that cause inflammation "has really benefitted me". Lentils, beans and kale are staples. Playing elite basketball at 42 suggests it works.

Three years ago we reported Taurasi winning her fifth Olympic gold in Tokyo, and last year she became the first WNBA player to score 10,000 points. Here in Paris, Novak Djokovic won gold at 37 and yesterday vegan setter Macris Carneiro won volleyball bronze with Brazil.

Six golds, powered by plants.