FIELDS Connor

General
THE WRITING ON THE WALL
When he was a teenager he wrote in marker pen on a wall of his parents' house, 'I will win and one day be Olympic champion'. The piece of wall was preserved by his parents when they moved house and now sits beside his gold medal from the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. "My parents actually moved out of the house I grew up in a few years ago, and when they moved they cut that piece of the wall out. They cut out the drywall where I wrote on it, so I have it sitting at my house. It's right next to my Olympic gold medal." (nbcsandiego.com, 14 Apr 2021)

RETIREMENT THOUGHTS
In 2021 he said that after the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo he will consider how much longer he wants to compete. "My plan was to go through the Tokyo Olympics, and then I'm going to take a little break and make a decision if I want to do one more year, two more years, [or try and keep going] indefinitely. For me the answer has always been, when I wake up and get out of bed in the morning and don't want to go ride, and I don't want to work out, and I don't want to do everything it takes to be a champion - that's when I'll hang it up. The downside of being an older athlete is my back is a bit sore, and I've got to warm up longer than I did when I was 20. But some of the positives are that I've raced so many times in my career that I don't feel extra nerves or added pressure." (dothaneagle.com, 27 Feb 2021; teamusa.org, 25 May 2021)

COACHING
When not travelling for competition, he works as a coach at a BMX track near his home in Las Vegas, NV, United States of America. "Typically, with all the travelling I do, I can't coach. So it's been so nice to have the time to do some riding schools and coaching kids at a very beginner level. It brings me back to the basics of why I enjoy the sport - seeing the joy of a kid just learning how to get their wheels off the ground, stuff like that. It's the total opposite of where I am in the sport, where you are always tracking your diet, squatting 400 pounds, having to win every race or deal with the pressure. It's nice to get back to raw love of being in the sport and being on a bike." (teamusa.org, 01 Oct 2020)

He became the first BMX racer representing the United States of America to win a gold medal at the Olympic Games, when he was victorious at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. (SportsDeskOnline, 19 Aug 2016)