The sport Coco Gauff ‘strongly’ felt she could have competed at the Olympics in other than tennis

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Coco Gauff could have gone down a very different path in her life.

Gauff has already won two Grand Slam titles in her career, having won the US Open in 2023 and the French Open in 2025.

These victories have enabled Gauff to be named the highest-paid sportswoman in the world right now.

As well as tennis, Gauff also enjoys watching basketball, but it was another sport that she thought she could have been an Olympian in.

Coco Gauff said she could have been an Olympic athlete

Gauff made her Olympics debut in Paris, where she was handed the big honour and responsibility of being the flag bearer for the USA.

The tennis itself did not go quite to plan for Gauff, but she did get to spend a lot of time with athletes from a variety of different sports.

Gauff’s next tournament after the Paris Games was the Canadian Open, where she claimed that she thinks she could have been an athletics Olympian had she chosen to go down a different path.

She also revealed that Olympic 100m champion Noah Lyles told her that he saw her as a hurdler, with Gauff telling her father that she would like to actually try a race during the tennis off-season.

“Yeah, I actually do, and I do, I mean, I do feel like I could have been, I don’t know if I would have been as good as I was in tennis in track, but I strongly feel like if I would have trained I could have been an Olympian,” Gauff said in her press conference.

“Track is the only sport I would say that in just because I did do well in middle school like never training, I didn’t go to one track practice, and I won all my races except two, and both were against the same girl and she was in 8th grade.

“Yeah, my mom said too, she ran track at Florida State, so she was like, I think if, you know, I think 400 would have been my race. Noah Lyles said he saw me as like a 400 hurdler, but I’m like kind of scared of hurdlers, so, yeah, I don’t think I would have been like that (laughing), but definitely 400 or longer would have been my thing.

“I do wish that, sometimes I’m like, what could have happened. I even talked to my dad about putting me in some local track meets in the off-season, just for (laughing), you know, just for the fun of it, just to see where I could go. I think I do want to do that. I’d do, maybe one off-season, just run a race, it doesn’t hurt, I wouldn’t train much for it, but just to see what my time would be would be pretty cool. I never ran out of blocks before so I guess I would have to learn how to do that.”

The four American athletes who Coco Gauff said inspired her at the Paris Olympics

When speaking about some of the athletes that she had been inspired by, Gauff named four Olympic champions; Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, Tara Davis-Woodhall, Gabby Thomas and Sha’Carri Richardson, and went on to reveal what she learnt from them.

“Yeah, it gives me a lot of inspiration,” said Gauff. “Seeing Sydney, and then Tara, she won the long jump, and then, yeah, Gabby Thomas winning the 200, and Sha’Carri winning silver, just so many people that I got to talk to.

“It definitely is inspiring, just seeing how all of them went through respective downs in their careers and to be able to, you know, find it, and each of them going through different mental and physical challenges.

“So, yeah, it does inspire me, and just also it puts perspective to, you know, of my age. Like, a lot of them are 24, between 24 to 27 range, so I guess it puts it into perspective sometimes, you know, you want things to happen now.

“I think I just learned to just trust in my training and trust in the journey, just with talking with them and learning about their stories. You know, sometimes when you do well young you just, you know, want everything to happen now.

“All of them at some point did well young, just because they’re so good, but I just learned to trust the journey and trust maturity and just your game is going to reach its final form in a few years. I’m 20, so hopefully by like 24 I’m there (laughing).”

Gauff will be hoping to use these learnings for the next Olympic Games in Los Angeles, where she is likely to be a huge fan favorite for the tennis events.