Follow live coverage of Day 12 of the 2024 Paris Olympics, with 21 gold medals on offer
LYON, France — Emma Hayes wanted her players to suffer.
On Monday, the U.S. women’s national team head coach showed her team a video of ultramarathoner Courtney Dauwalter discussing how she digs deep during 100-mile races. Dauwalter enters what she calls her “pain cave” during races. With every mile, Dauwalter imagines herself in a hard hat with a chisel, picking at the walls of the pain cave, tolerating more and more and more.
“I could see today that players were having to dig to the deepest place within them,” Hayes said Tuesday, following their second consecutive extra-time win in the semifinal against Germany.
“I’ve said this all along — the reason I want to play the team together for as long as possible is because I want them to develop that. I want them to suffer. I want them to have that moment because I do not believe you can win without it.”
A year to the day after it was bounced from the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Melbourne, Australia, the U.S. survived and advanced. In four days, back in Paris, the U.S. will have a chance to win a gold medal. The team is not the same as it was a year ago. Right now, the players are tired, forced to dig deep mentally with each new…
