Gracie Gold wrestles with path to Olympic dream, shares how ‘dark days’ shaped her in new memoir  

There’s a moment midway through Gracie Gold’s new memoir, titled, chillingly, outofshapeworthlessloser, when she fantasises about choosing ice hockey as a young kid over her eventual path, figure skating.

“I closed my eyes and imagined little Grace Elizabeth battling in the corners for loose pucks,” Gold writes. “I could totally picture it. ... If I had played hockey, how would it have shaped my personality? My life?”

It’s a question that Gold asks over and over again in a myriad of ways in the book, which was released 9 February and ghost-written by former New York Times journalist Karen Crouse.

Gold, a two-time U.S. champion and Olympic team bronze medallist at Sochi 2014, details how that aforementioned path was littered with roadblocks, wrong turns and not enough pit stops. She recounts her “fall from grace,” as it were, after the 2016 World Championships, where her fourth-place finish sent her into a mental and emotional tailspin.

“I didn't have the words yet to say, like, ‘Oh, I'm entering a massive depressive episode,'” Gold tells Olympics.com in an exclusive interview of the 2016 aftermath. “I didn't know how to explain that, so I think that's why I just kept going, because that had typically worked for me in the past.”

Where Gold takes readers next is into the Arizona desert, eventually checking herself into a rehabilitation centre as she faced depression and anxiety issues coupled with disordered eating and a painstaking penchant for perfection, which she draws an arc back to her figure skating (and family) roots: Always asked to be a princess – on the ice and off of it.

“[In] every fiber of my being I felt like I was unwinding,” she says of 2017-18. “Between the Olympics and working through my family stuff and eating disorder, like, those were really, really tough. We had some dark days in treatment

She adds: “But I guess on some level I was like, ‘Well, I guess I should try to tackle these issues because I can go back to the way I was living. I can go back to just putting all the skeletons in the closet and living this kind of bleak existence.’ But I just thought, ‘OK, I guess we'll try to get better as well. Like, what do we have to lose at this point?’”

Gracie Gold: Understanding her Olympic journey

Over the last five years, Gold has become a vocal advocate for athletes in the mental health space. She’s also returned to competitive skating, but hasn’t quite reached the heights of 2013-16, with her eighth-place finish at the U.S. Championships in 2023 the best of the last four years.

But what she’s shown in other arenas is part of a marked shift since that abrupt end to her 2016 season: The athlete journey is complicated and layered, and – while the exterior might show no cracks – every individual has something bubbling up underneath that they have to tend to.

“I think that change in the conversation is what [has been] most powerful,” Gold confirmed, saying she wishes she would have more heavily considered stepping away from the sport for a concentrated time.

“If someone would have said, ‘Let's get you some mental health [help].' And like, ‘You're going to be okay and no one's going to judge you for it.’ I think creating that kind of concept instead of having like... it [was] rooted in shame; like there was something wrong with me.”

Gold wrestles with her Olympic journey throughout the book, having made the U.S. team at 18 in 2014, she battles with the Grace Kelly comparisons from famed coach Frank Carroll. After finishing fourth in Sochi, she appears on path for the Olympic podium in 2018 before the outward-facing unravelling occurs.

It’s more nuanced than that, Gold reveals in the book – and confirms in our interview.

“That was probably the hardest part of writing this book: Writing it in a way where I didn't want people to [think] I hate skating or hate the Olympics and the Olympic dream,” she shares.

“The whole book is about just how I handled everything around skating and the pursuit of the Olympics poorly,” she says. “In some ways I had a delusion that going to the Olympics – or if I could just have enough accolades in skating – that it would fix other problems. It doesn't, it turns out, work like that. I just thought if I could have enough titles and enough medals, it would make the other stuff in my life better or fix it entirely.

Gold on surgery, a (possible) return to competition and Jason Brown

Gold takes readers through the four “versions” of herself, including her childhood (Grace Elizabeth); top-ranked, international skater (Gracie Gold); her downfall period (outofshapeworthlessloser); and the path she’s charted since (simply called: “Me”).

“Any plans that I've made, even, like, two-year or five-year plans have literally never worked out in my whole life,” she tells us. “So I don't really make these anymore. I try to just make six months to maybe a year if we're feeling very confident.”

She spoke to Olympics.com from the U.S. Olympic training facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where she had just had a long-awaited hip surgery after a series of frustrations around the injury.

Is a comeback to competitive skating still on the cards?

“There could be,” she says. “I mean, that just entirely depends on how my hip does. I'm just waiting to see how all the rehab [goes] and getting back on the ice [to coach]. So that's a question I'll be able to accurately answer in May or June.”

“Last time I was [in Colorado], in 2017, I got sent to rehab,” she remembers. “So this time around... we're just here for physical rehab, which is great. And it's been pretty good. In my present life. I mean, I am enjoying... [And then] we'll see if skating competitively is in the cards, or if there are other opportunities out there for me.”

The topics that the memoir tackles are vast, and it’s been a process for Gold that she calls “cathartic.”

“I was selectively vulnerable a lot in the past few years when it came to” talking about myself, she said, saying the book rectifies that selectiveness. “It’s not like anything I’ve done before: It was crazy. It was fun. It was overwhelming at times... Nerve wracking, but exciting.”

And one of the first calls she got when the book came out? From fellow American skater and 2014 Olympic teammate, Jason Brown.

“He FaceTimed me and was just blown away,” Gold said, smiling. “There were things he found surprising and he resonated with so many parts of it.

“He’s been skating’s ‘golden child,’ and I found that interesting, because a big part of my story has been getting stuck with these narratives, too.”