From Track to Love: The Inspirational Journey of Tara and Hunter Woodhall

We drive to practice together, we train together, we drive home from practice. Tara and Hunter Woodhall are elite athletes who are also married. In the Paris Olympics, Tara took home gold in the long jump. Now it’s Hunter’s turn to aim for gold in the Paris Paralympics. Hunter and I met in 2017 when we were both in high school at a track meet in Idaho. He lived in Utah. I live in California. At the time, I saw him warming up while I was warming up, and I was like, wow, that guy’s really cute. And he finished his race. And I immediately went up on the track, and I was like, I don’t know why I have to do this, but I have to hug you. I spent the rest of that track, me, like, walking around purposely hoping to, like, accidentally run into Tara so we could have another interaction. And I only saw her one time. She was with her dad and her mom and her whole family. I was like, oh, screw it. Um, but we saw each other get at the medal ceremonies and talked for, like, an awkward 20 seconds or so. And ever since then, I was shooting my shot whenever I could to get a hold of this guy. My mind wasn’t saying that I’m the Olympic champion. Once I, like, fell back into the sand. That was just, like, a moment for me to take in everything, to hear The crowd roaring when I got back up. And, like, the first person I see when I stand up is hunter. The only thing I wanna do is just run into his arms. I’ve seen everything this girl’s fought through. I’ve seen how hard it was to get to that point. These are the moments she’ll remember forever. These are the moments that. That make life worth living. And. And that was the moment he’s like, you’re the Olympic champion. And I don’t know, those words just have not set in very well with me yet. And I think it’s a good thing because it doesn’t allow me to lose focus on what we have to do for the Paris. I can celebrate after we have. We have some work to do. Hunter’s turn to compete for gold at the Para Olympics will be in both a 100 meter T64 and 400 meter T62 races. Every day we train together, so we’ve kind of developed this other relationship where it’s the teamwork. Like, yes, it’s teamwork in marriage, but we are a team on the track. We drive to practice together, we train together, we drive home from practice. Like, we do everything together. We’re together most hours of the day. As long as Tara can stand me, whatever.