“Stomach Kinda Hurting”: Olympic Champion Shares Dealing With Anxiety on Race Days

Kendall Ellis, who won an Olympic gold medal in the 4×400 meters relay, ran 49.46 seconds to win the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials 400 meters race, her first personal best in six years. Her mornings before a race always start with a racing heartbeat, as she revealed to NBA forward DeMar DeRozan.

Ellis talked about this feeling on Episode 8 of Dinners with DeMar, a show DeRozan hosts.

“I started running when I was seven and had anxiety from the very beginning. I think at that age you don’t necessarily know that it’s anxiety and you don’t have the words for it. It’s just you’re told you’re nervous, you have butterflies,” Ellis told DeRozan on his show.

“And so I think navigating that as I got older and realizing this is something much bigger than nerves, it’s a bit more debilitating and something was really impacting the way I’m able to compete and perform. 

“And so as I’ve gotten older over the years and had access to more resources like sports psychologists and, and therapists, I’ve been able to manage it a lot better, but something that I still deal with and will likely always deal with.

She had severe pre-race anxiety after the Tokyo 2020 Games that made her want to retire in 2022. Her failure to reach the finals at the 2023 U.S. Championships prevented her from competing in the World Championships. This is why she carefully manages the initial minutes of the race.

That same discipline shapes how she handles outside pressure, which she also addressed in the interview.

“My least favorite thing is when people ask, ‘Are you ready?’ Because the gun’s going off whether I’m ready or not. So like it, it don’t matter. But I think the day before I’m really trying to just enjoy kinda my last day of like not thinking about it, not worrying about it. There’s nothing I can control at this point,” Ellis added.

History backs up her frustration. Before the 2024 Trials semifinals, Ellis was trapped in a crowded portable toilet for 10 minutes without her phone. She overcame it, though, running a PB of 49.81 and winning the final from lane eight. It saw her banish the ghosts of 2021 when Allyson Felix surged from behind to edge past Ellis during the U.S. Olympic Trials. 

The fierce finish left Ellis in fourth place in 50.10 seconds, missing an individual Olympic berth by a mere 0.07 seconds. However, in 2024, she earned her first Olympic individual race in Paris and advanced to the semi-finals. That was only after Ellis passed the repechage round and finished ninth of all runners with a time of 50.40. 

Then, unexpectedly, she was scratched four minutes before the start of the women’s 4×400-meter relay final. This came after she anchored USC to a 4×400-meter relay win at the 2018 NCAA Outdoor Championships. 

At the 2020 Tokyo Games, she took part in both relays’ preliminaries and won gold in the women’s event while also bringing bronze in the mixed one. She is a four-time NCAA champion, 14-time All-American and twice World Champion in the 4×400.

With the 2026 season finished, Ellis is training and recovering with Los Angeles 2028 in view. The routine that carries her there is just as deliberate as her race plan.

Why Kendall Ellis chooses calm music over hype playlists

Once the reassurance is done, the routine turns practical. While many sprinters build adrenaline early with loud playlists and pep talks, Ellis keeps hers low on purpose, and her reasoning to DeRozan was direct.

After all, the 30-year-old Olympian has been dealing with this since she was a child and first started sprinting. Now, with some outside help and her experience, she’s created a routine and a checklist that keep her in the moment. In fact, it helps keep her grounded and her anxiety in check, especially on race day.

“The morning of is a different story, I think,” Ellis said on Dinner with DeMar. “I’m gonna wake up with some anxiety, my heart racing, and my stomach kinda hurting. In those moments, I like to just lie down and remind myself, ‘It’s not happening yet.’”

“’You’re safe. You’re here. You just woke up. Let’s do our morning routine.’ Take your time with your skincare, do your hair, lay out your clothes, and really try to, I hate the word romanticize, but kinda romanticize your morning routine.”

For Ellis, that’s just how she keeps things in check. And it doesn’t just apply to her morning routine, as she also used the same logic for her pre-race routine as well, especially her choice of music.

“I know people like their hype music, but I’m like, I don’t need my nerves. I’m good,” she explained. “Like, I want the calmest of music there is or silence. I’m listening to a podcast. Like, I’m really trying to keep things like business as usual.”

Her approach connects to her work away from the track. Ellis advocates for mental health in sports and founded The Ellis Effect, a non-profit that offers mentorship and resources to youth athletes.

This specific routine gives young runners a concrete example of managing nerves instead of fighting them, and it comes from an athlete with two Olympic Games under her belt.

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