Photo: Red CreaDeporte via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0, cropped.
Plant-based sprinter Kaylin Whitney is an Olympic champion. The United States won the women's 4x400m relay in Tokyo today (Saturday, August 7) in 3:16.85, and Whitney gets a gold medal for running the opening leg in the heats that got them there.
On Thursday Whitney, Wadeline Jonathas, Kendall Ellis and Lynna Irby won their heat in 3:20.86. In the final Sydney McLaughlin, Allyson Felix, Dalilah Muhammad and Athing Mu took over and won by more than three seconds from Poland, the USA's seventh straight Olympic title in the event. USATF lists all eight women as gold medallists.
It's Whitney's second medal of the Games. A week ago she ran the third leg as the USA took bronze in the mixed 4x400m, alongside Trevor Stewart, Kendall Ellis and Vernon Norwood.
The 23-year-old from Florida set world youth bests at 100m and 200m as a 16-year-old in 2014 but missed out on Rio. This year she moved up to the 400m, and at the same time changed what she eats. Before the US trials in June she told VegNews:
I changed my diet to a predominantly plant-based one, because I felt it would help make me a better athlete, and I was right! My training, recovery, and performances have been the best they have been in years!
A new event, a new diet and two Olympic medals in her first Games. The official results put her name next to some of the greatest 400m runners of all time.
Team USA's plant-based athletes are having a good Olympics. Alex Morgan won bronze with the women's football team on Thursday. Five years ago Kendrick Farris was the only male US weightlifter at the Rio Olympics, and in 2018 we told you about the vegan Olympian who won gold and rescued a dog.
Gold medal, powered by plants.