(MENAFN- The Peninsula)
The Washington Post
TOKYO - On the morning of her first Tokyo Olympics appearance, Raven Saunders dyed the right side of her buzz cut green and the left half purple. Normally, Saunders makes it all green, a nod to her nickname, Hulk.
"Kind of an ode to the Joker, but also a way to switch it up a little bit, you know create a little bit of shock value," Saunders said. "I know everybody was probably expecting the green, so, I had to change it up."
The bicolor hair sat atop Technicolor-shield sunglasses and a plastic-filter mask emblazoned with the Joker's smile. Photographs of Saunders glowering as she qualified her way into Sunday's final became one of the most striking images of the Tokyo Olympics.
"I know these photos are going crazy right now," Saunders said.
Saunders has a way of defying expectation. She has the sneer and the brawn of a world-class shot putter during meets - and then displays her bubbly, infectious personality afterward. She possesses enough confidence to talk about winning one of the toughest shot put competitions in history - then mentions the self-described mental health breakdown she suffered in 2018. She wears a mask, but she will remove it.
Saunders, 25, made her first Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, where she finished fifth. She struggled upon her return, and she defined herself solely through her successes and failures in the shot put. In 2018, she has said in the past, Saunders considered suicide. She sought therapy and recovered. The mental health of athletes, and athletes advocating mental health awareness, has been a dominant theme of these Olympics, and Saunders was on the vanguard of the discussion.
"It helped me to find my value outside of being an athlete," Saunders said. "It helped me to find my value and things I love to do outside of the sport, which also helped me grow my love for the sport."
Saunders arrived at that dark place in 2018, she said, because her sport swallowed her identity whole. People within her circle and those outside it discussed only shot put.
"A lot of people lose sight of asking, 'Oh, how are you doing actually?'" Saunders said. ". . . When you're constantly surrounded by sport talk, sport talk, sport talk and you don't have any type of escape, or any way to give yourself a mental de-stress from it, you kind of get lost in it. . . . Sometimes you need a break."
Through therapy, Saunders learned how to compartmentalize, and how to use shot put as a tool. She started to love shot put again.
"Things that irritate me, things that piss me off, things that make me upset, I save it for my training," Saunders said. "So that doesn't affect Raven the person. When I'm me and I'm outside or whatever, I'm just enjoying being a person. I'm gonna play my Xbox, I'm gonna go do some yoga, I'm going to sit there and I'm gonna dance. I'm going to be me. I'm going to be a human being. But when I get into the ring, I'm here, I'm here. Nothing else matters. I shut out the rest of the world, and I'm going to town."
At these Olympics, Saunders is carrying the torch in women's shot put for an American team defending a gold medal without the defending Olympic champion. Michelle Carter had surgery on her ankle to remove a benign tumor this summer, which knocked her out of the U.S. trials.
Saunders is a beloved member of the U.S. track team. Maybe another athlete would bring an Xbox on the flight to Tokyo, but only Saunders would bring a projector screen for it, too. She and her teammates played Madden, Monopoly and Grand Theft Auto. It felt like the shortest flight of her life.
"If there's a will, Raven will find a way," Saunders said.
In recent years, Saunders has worn a face mask during competition for reasons unrelated to the coronavirus. She has the Joker mask, and at U.S. trials wore a Hulk mask. During meets, many throwers like to talk and laugh between throws. Shot put is where Saunders stows the things that make her angry.
"This is like my way of being friendly, I guess, in a way," Saunders said, erupting in laughter.
"I'm, like, literally the greatest person. But during competition, I don't like anybody."
Saunders, like everyone else, must wear a mask everywhere during the Pandemic Games. Sometimes, she chooses to wear the Joker mask around the Athletes Village.
"I get looks," she said, laughing again. "I get lots of looks."
It was suggested that maybe her new nickname, for these Games, should be Joker.
"I'm always the Hulk," Saunders said. "But you know, got to switch it up. There's different versions of the Hulk."
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