Olympic champion Gabby Thomas will miss the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo after announcing she’s been battling a lingering Achilles tendon injury that worsened earlier this summer.
Thomas, 28, has been dealing with the issue since May and said she aggravated the injury further in July, just a month before finishing third at the U.S. Olympic Trials to qualify for the 200m team.
That third-place finish came by just one-thousandth of a second, and at the time, she didn’t look like her usual self. Now the reason is clear.
“As an athlete you always want to keep grinding, but sometimes you simply can’t outwork an injury. Sometimes it’s about patience and making the right decision for the long term,” she said in a statement Tuesday.
It’s a tough blow, not just because Thomas was a medal favorite, but because she was coming off the best year of her career.
In Paris last summer, she won Olympic gold in the 200 meters, along with golds in both the 4x100m and 4x400m relays, capping a three-medal Games and solidifying her status as one of the most complete sprinters in the sport.
She’d also taken silver in the 200m at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest and was widely seen as a top contender to win her first individual world title in Tokyo this month.
Instead, she’ll be watching from home.
But the physical injury isn’t the only weight she’s carrying.
This season, Thomas also committed to the inaugural Grand Slam Track (GST) series, a bold new professional league created by Michael Johnson that promised high payouts and a reimagined competition format.
She won both the 200m and 400m at the GST meet in Kingston back in April, collecting a $100,000 payday that, so far, is the only payment GST has delivered.
The rest of the prize purse, reportedly more than $13 million owed across appearance fees and race winnings, has still not materialized for athletes. Thomas, like many others, has not been paid for several appearances, despite GST continuing to post promotional content using her image.
She responded to one such post on Instagram with a dry but revealing comment: “So dope!! pls pay me 🥲.”
The gesture said what many athletes have only whispered publicly, highlighting the frustration, exhaustion, and disappointment in a league that sold itself as athlete-first, but may now be struggling to meet basic obligations.
The head of World Athletics, Sebastian Coe, has also weighed in, calling the situation “not good” and warning that ventures like GST can’t become “vanity projects” that forget what matters: paying athletes and delivering on promises.
For Thomas, all of it—the injury, the unpaid prize money, the emotional toll of carrying expectations into an Olympic year—seemed to catch up at once. She hasn’t raced since U.S. Nationals, and while her season-best of 21.95 seconds still ranks fourth in the world for 2025, she hasn’t been able to train fully since July.
She’s planning to return in 2026, but for now, the season is over.
“All the best to my Team USA teammates fighting for medals in Tokyo,” she added. “I’ll be cheering them on from home.”
Her absence leaves a noticeable gap on the U.S. 200m squad, where Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and McKenzie Long will now lead the charge. Both women have clocked faster times than Thomas this year, with Jefferson-Wooden running 21.84 and Long 21.93, but neither has the major championship experience Thomas brings.
It also leaves a lot of questions about the state of professional track and field, especially as more athletes speak out about being asked to perform at a world-class level without guaranteed pay. Thomas’ year was meant to be about solidifying her legacy. Instead, it’s become a sobering reminder that even Olympic champions aren’t immune to injury, or instability.
